The    Cambridge    History 

of 

American    Literature 


' 


Edited  by 
William  Peterfield  Trent,  M.A.,  LL.D. 

Professor  of  English  Literature  in  Columbia   University 

John  Erskine,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  English  in  Columbia  University 

Stuart  P.  Sherman,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  English  in  the  University  of  Illinois 

Carl  Van  Doren,  Ph.D. 

Literary  Editor  of  "The  Nation" 


In  Four  Volumes 

*   *   * 

Later  National  Literature:   Part  II 


New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

Cambridge, England:  University  Press 

1921 


COPYRIGHT,  1921 

BY 
G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Printed  in  the  United  Stales  of  America 


CB 


PREFACE 

IN  the  final  volumes  of  The  Cambridge  History  of  American 
Literature  will  be  found   several  chapters  which   cover 
periods  beginning  much  earlier  than  the  Later  National 
Period  to  which  the  volumes  are  specifically  devoted.    They  are 
placed  here  partly  because  it  has  been  found  convenient  to 
hold  them  till  the  last,  inasmuch  as  they  deal  with  large  groups 
of  writers  not  readily  classified  elsewhere,  and  also  because  in 
almost  every  case  the  bulk  of  the  material  discussed  in  them 
was  produced  after  1850. 

The  delay  in  the  publication  of  these  volumes  has  been  due, 
not  only  to  the  unsettled  conditions  of  the  time,  but  equally  to 
the  realization,  as  the  work  has  advanced,  that  the  number  of 
pioneer  tasks  still  to  be  undertaken  in  the  study  of  American 
literature  was  larger  than  could  be  entirely  foreseen.  We  can 
not  claim  to  have  accomplished  all  or  nearly  all  of  them.  But 
it  would  be  equivalent  to  a  failure  to  acknowledge  our  ap 
preciation  of  the  aid  rendered  by  our  sixty-four  contributors, 
who  have  faithfully  laboured  to  bring  this  history  to 
a  completion,  if  we  did  not  express  a  belief  that  the 
work  as  a  whole  furnishes  a  new  and  important  basis  for 
the  understanding  of  American  life  and  culture. 

THE  EDITORS. 

10  September,  1920. 


' 
.1  U 


iii 


CONTENTS 

BOOK  III  (Continued) 
LATER  NATIONAL  LITERATURE:  PART  II 

CHAPTER  VIII 
MARK  TWAIN 

By  STUART  P.  SHERMAN,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  English  in  the 
University  of  Illinois. 


ADDITIONS   AND  CORRECTIONS,   VOLUME   III 

P.     17,  1.   18,  for  at  the  Court  of  King  Arthur  read  in  King  Arthur's  Court. 

P.     84,  1.     2,  add  He  died  11  May,  1920. 

P.  104,  1.  26,  for  A   Turn  of  the  Screw  read  The  Turn  of  the  Screw. 

P.  163,  1.     i,  for  Adirondack  read  Adirondacks. 

P.  164,  1.     4,  for  as  regards  of  read  as  regards. 

P.  260,  1.  25,  for  mode  or  read  mode  of. 

P.  294,  1.     9,  for  The  Songs  of  Songs  read  The  Song  of  Songs. 

P.  345,  1.  13,  for  because  read  because  of. 

P-  375»  1-  26,  for  spring  read  summer. 


LATER  POETS 

By  NORMAN  FOERSTER,  A.M.,  Professor  of  English  in  the 
University  of  North  Carolina. 

Poets  of  East  and  West.  New  England.  Emily  Dickinson.  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich.  Minor  Figures.  The  Middle  States.  Bayard  Taylor. 
Richard  Henry  Stoddard.  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman.  Minor 
Figures.  Richard  Watson  Gilder.  Richard  Hovey.  The  West. 
Jpaquin  Miller.  Edward  Rowland  Sill.  Minor  Figures.  James 
Whitcomb  Riley.  William  Vaughn  Moody.  Contemporary  Poetry  31 


CONTENTS 

BOOK  III  (Continued) 
LATER  NATIONAL  LITERATURE:  PART  II 

CHAPTER  VIII 
MARK  TWAIN 

By  STUART  P.  SHERMAN,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  English  in  the 
University  of  Illinois. 

Mark  Twain's  Place  in  American  Literature.  Youth.  Printer  and  Pilot. 
The  Far  West.  Journalist  and  Lecturer.  The  Quaker  City  Excursion. 
Later  Life.  Artistic  Ideals.  Travel  Books.  The  Innocents  Abroad. 
Roughing  It.  A  Tramp  Abroad.  Life  on  the  Mississippi.  Following 
the  Equator.  Fiction.  The  Gilded  Age.  The  Adventures  of  Tom 
Sawyer.  The  Adventures  of  Huckleberry  Finn.  A  Connecticut  Yankee 
in  King  Arthur's  Court.  Pudd'nhead  Wilson.  Personal  Recollections 
of  Joan  of  Arc.  Naturalistic  Pessimism.  What  is  Man?  The 
Mysterious  Stranger .  .'"''.  .  i 

CHAPTER  IX 

MINOR  HUMORISTS 

By  GEORGE  FRISBIE  WHICHER,   Ph.D.,  Associate  Pro 
fessor  of  English  in  Amherst  College. 

Humorous  Paragraphs  and  Columns  in  Newspapers.  Comic  Journalism. 
Puck.  Judge.  Life.  New  Tendencies  after  the  Civil  War.  Charles 
Godfrey  Leland.  George  Ade.  Eugene  Field.  Mr.  Dooley. 
O.  Henry 21 

CHAPTER  X 
LATER  POETS 

By  NORMAN  FOERSTER,  A.M.,  Professor  of  English  in  the 
University  of  North  Carolina. 

Poets  of  East  and  West.  New  England.  Emily  Dickinson.  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich.  Minor  Figures.  The  Middle  States.  Bayard  Taylor. 
Richard  Henry  Stoddard.  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman.  Minor 
Figures.  Richard  Watson  Gilder.  Richard  Hovey.  The  West. 
Tpaquin  Miller.  Edward  Rowland  Sill.  Minor  Figures.  James 
Whitcomb  Riley.  William  Vaughn  Moody.  Contemporary  Poetry  31 


vi  Contents 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE  LATER  NOVEL:  HOWELLS 

By  CARL  VAN  DOREN,  Ph.D.,   Literary  Editor  of  The 
Nation,  Associate  in  English  in  Columbia  University. 

The  Dime  Novel.  John  Esten  Cooke.  Theodore  Winthrop.  Domestic 
Sentimentalism.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe.  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  Dred. 
Her  Novels  of  New  England  Life.  E.  P.  Roe.  Lew  Wallace.  Edward 
Eggleston.  William  Dean  Howells.  The  Development  of  His  Taste. 
Experiments  in  Fiction.  A  Chance  Acquaintance.  A  Modern  Instance. 
The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham.  Turgenev  and  Tolstoy.  A  Hazard  of  New 
Fortunes.  Altruria.  Travels  and  Memoirs.  Later  Novels.  The 
Eighties.  Francis  Marion  Crawford.  Characteristics.  Ideals. 
Range.  Reactions  from  Official  Realism.  Rococo  Romance.  S.  Weir 
Mitchell.  Naturalism.  E.  W.  Howe.  Stephen  Crane.  Frank 
Norris.  Jack  London.  Contemporaries. 66 

CHAPTER  XII 

HENRY  JAMES 

By  JOSEPH  WARREN  BEACH,  Ph.D.,  Associate  Professor  of 

English  in  the  University  of  Minnesota. 

The  Question  of  James's  Americanism.  His  Passion  for  "Europe."  Amer 
icans  in  His  Stories.  Transcendentalism.  Parentage  and  Education. 
Newport,  Boston,  Cambridge.  Residence  Abroad.  Miscellaneous 
Writings.  Collected  Stories.  Earlier  Novels.  Short  Stories.  Later 
Novels.  Peculiarity  of  the  James  Method.  James  and  Pater.  Amer 
ican  Faith  and  European  Culture.  .  .  .  .  ...  .96 

CHAPTER  XIII 

LATER  ESSAYISTS 

By  GEORGE  S.  HELLMAN,  A.M. 

Types  of  American  Essayists.  Donald  Grant  Mitchell.  Detachment 
from  Public  Affairs.  George  William  Curtis.  Prue  and  I.  Public 
Career.  Charles  Eliot  Norton.  His  Great  Influence.  Thomas 
Wentworth  Higginson.  Varied  Interests.  Moncure  D.  Conway. 
Edward  Everett  Hale.  The  Man  Without  a  Country.  Julia  Ward 
Howe.  Emma  Lazarus.  Mrs.  Stowe.  Charles  Dudley  Warner. 
Hamilton  Wright  Mabie.  Edwin  Percy  Whipple.  Edmund  Clarence 
Stedman.  William  Winter.  Laurence  Hutton.  Living  Essayists.  .  109 

CHAPTER  XIV 

TRAVELLERS  AND  EXPLORERS,  1846-1900 

By  FREDERICK  S.  DELLENBAUGH. 

Texas.  The  Santa  F6  Trail.  By  the  Missouri  to  Oregon.  Naval  Ex 
peditions.  Missionaries.  Routes  from  Santa  Fe*  to  Los  Angeles.  The 
Oregon  Trail.  California.  Fremont.  The  Mormons.  The  Gold- 
Seekers.  Indians.  A  Pacific  Railway.  Perry's  Visit  to  Japan. 
Boundary  Surveys.  Joaquin  Miller.  Mark  Twain.  Travellers  to 
the  Orient.  The  South  Seas.  The  Colorado  River.  Geological  Sur- 


Contents  vii 


veys.  The  Bureau  of  Ethnology.  War  with  the  Sioux.  Cowboys. 
The  Isthmus  of  Panama.  Travels  in  the  Older  States.  Africa.  Egypt. 
Italy.  Spain.  Russia.  Many  Lands.  The  Philippines.  Alaska. 
Arctic  Exploration.  Peary's  Discovery  of  the  North  Pole.  .  .  131 

CHAPTER  XV 

LATER  HISTORIANS 

By  JOHN  SPENCER  BASSETT,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of 
American  History  in  Smith  College. 

Changes  in  Conceptions  of  History.  Underlying  Movements.  The 
Growth  of  Historical  Societies.  The  American  Historical  Association. 
The  American  Historical  Review.  The  Collection  of  Historical  Docu 
ments.  The  Transformation  of  Historical  Instruction  in  the  Uni 
versities.  Herbert  B.  Adams.  Minor  Historians  of  the  Old  School. 
John  William  Draper.  Accounts  of  the  Civil  War.  John  G.  Nicolay 
and  John  Hay.  Abraham  Lincoln,  a  History.  Southern  Histories. 
"  The  Great  Subject " — The  Age  of  Discovery  and  Exploration.  Amer 
icana  and  Collectors.  Henry  Harrisse.  Justin  Winsor.  Edward  Gay- 
lord  Bourne.  Four  Literary  Historians.  John  Foster  Kirk.  Francis 
Parkman.  France  and  England  in  North  America.  Edward  Eggleston. 
"A  History  of  Life  in  the  United  States."  John  Fiske.  Historians  of 
the  Latest  Period.  Henry  Charles  Lea.  Hubert  Howe  Bancroft. 
Alfred  Thayer  Mahan.  Charles  Francis  Adams.  Henry  Adams.  Mont 
Saint  Michel  and  Char tres.  The  Education  of  Henry  Adams.  .  .171 

CHAPTER  XVI 

LATER  THEOLOGY 

By  AMBROSE  WHITE  VERNON,  A.M.,  D.D.,  Professor  of 
Biography  in  Carleton  College. 

The  Decline  of  Theology.  Charles  Hodge.  Heresy  Trials.  Charles 
Augustus  Briggs.  Changing  Conceptions  of  the  Bible.  The  Revised 
Version.  The  Higher  Criticism.  Evolution.  Foreign  Missions.  The 
Study  of  Comparative  Religions.  Walter  Rauschenbusch.  Washing 
ton  Gladden.  Phillips  Brooks 201 

CHAPTER  XVII 

LATER  PHILOSOPHY 

By  MORRIS  R.  COHEN,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in 
the  College  of  the  City  of  New  York. 

American  Life  and  American  Philosophy.  The  Traditions  of  American 
Philosophy.  Large  Indebtedness  to  Great  Britain.  Other  Influences. 
Scotch  Common-Sense  Realism.  The  Evolutionary  Philosophy.  Its 
Influence  on  American  Theology.  John  Fiske.  His  Substitution  of 
the  Evolutionary  Myth  for  the  Old  Theology.  Scientific  Thought  in 
America.  Chauncey  Wright.  His  Conception  of  True  Scientific 
Method.  William  T.  Harris.  His  Attack  on  Agnosticism.  The  Journal 
of  Speculative  Philosophy.  The  Improvement  of  Philosophical  Teach 
ing.  The  Philosophical  Review.  Philosophical  Professors.  Charles  S. 
Peirce.'  The  Origins  of  Pragmatism.  Josiah  Royce.  Metaphysical 
Idealism.  The  World  and  the  Individual.  William  James.  His  Vivid 
ness  and  Humanity.  Principles  of  Psychology.  Radical  Empiricism. 


Contents 

Pluralism.  John  Dewey.  Naturalism.  Great  Influence.  J.  Mark 
Baldwin.  Pancalism.  George  Santayana.  The  Life  of  Reason. 
Detachment.  The  New  Realism.  .......  226 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  DRAMA,  1860-1918 

By  MONTROSE  J.  MOSES. 

The  Civil  War  on  the  Stage.  Black  and  Red  Americans.  Dion  Bouci- 
cault.  John  Brougham.  General  Unconcern  with  Native  Drama. 
Edwin  Forrest.  Charlotte  Cushman.  Edwin  Booth.  Lawrence 
Barrett.  Lester  Wallack.  W.  E.  Burton.  The  Search -for  Foreign 
Plays.  Augustin  Daly.  Critics.  Laurence  Hutton.  Brander 
Matthews.  William  Winter.  Bronson  Howard.  Local  Color.  Steele 
MacKaye.  The  Theatres  of  the  Eighties  in  New  York.  The  Star 
System.  Theatrical  Trusts.  Charles  and  Daniel  Frohman.  David 
Belasco.  Augustus  Thomas.  Clyde  Fitch.  James  A.  Herne.  Wil 
liam  Gillette.  Charles  Klein.  Lurid  Melodrama.  Successful  Novels 
on  the  Stage.  The  Publication  of  Plays.  George  Ade.  George  M. 
Cohan.  William  Vaughn  Moody.  Later  Literary  Drama.  The  Broad 
way  School.  Tricks  and  Farces.  Independent  Theatres.  The 
New  Theatre.  Pageants.  Secessionist  Groups.  .  .  .  .  266 

CHAPTER  XIX 

LATER  MAGAZINES 

By  WILLIAM  B.  CAIRNS,  Ph.D.,  Associate  Professor  of 
American  Literature  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin. 

The  Importance  of  the  American  Magazine.  Advertising.  Short  Stories. 
The  North  A  merican  Review.  Minor  Reviews  in  New  England  and  New 
York.  The  South.  The  Older  Magazines  Continued.  The  Atlantic 
Monthly.  Harper's  Monthly  Magazine.  Scribner's  Monthly.  The 
Century  Magazine.  Scribner's  Magazine.  Putnam's  Monthly  Maga 
zine  and  Its  Successors.  The  Galaxy.  The  Overland  Monthly.  The 
Ladies' Home  Journal.  Popular  Magazines.  Muck-Raking.  McClure's 
Magazine.  Recent  Developments.  ....  .  299 

CHAPTER  XX 

NEWSPAPERS  SINCE  1860 

By  FRANK  W.  SCOTT,  Ph.D.,  Assistant  Professor  of  Eng 
lish  in  the  University  of  Illinois. 

The  Newspapers  of  1860.  Progress  During  the  Civil  War.  Correspond 
ents.  Censorship.  The  Influence  of  the  Great  Editors.  Mechanical 
Improvements.  Reconstruction.  Charles  A.  Dana  and  the  New 
York  Sun.  Weekly  Papers.  The  Independent.  Harper's  Weekly.  The 
Nation.  The  Decline  of  Editorials.  The  Growth  of  Advertising.  The 
Associated  Press.  Foreign  News  Service.  Sensationalism.  Joseph 
Pulitzer  and  the  New  York  World.  William  Randolph  Hearst.  The 
Sunday  Supplement.  Recent  Tendencies.  Economic  Bias  Among 
Newspapers.  The  New  Importance  of  the  Weekly  and  Monthly 
Papers.  Collier's  Weekly.  The  New  Republic.  The  Weekly  Review. 
The  Liberator.  The  Survey.  Reedy 's  Mirror.  The  Dial.  The  Bell 
man.  Party  Organs.  Public  Activities  of  Newspapers.  The  World 
War.  .  .  .319 


Contents  ix 

CHAPTER  XXI 

POLITICAL  WRITING  SINCE  1850 

By  WILLIAM  KENNETH  BOYD,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  History 
in  Trinity  College,  Durham,  North  Carolina. 

The  Change  of  Temper  after  1850.  Pro-Slavery  Arguments.  Thomas  R. 
Dew.  Attacks  on  Jefferson's  Ideas  and  on  Modern  Industrial  Condi 
tions.  States'  Rights  and  Secession.  Southern  Writers  Opposed  to 
Secession.  Francis  Lieber.  Writers  Opposed  to  Slavery.  Hinton  Rowan 
Helper.  Northern  Attitudes  Toward  Slavery.  The  Fugitive  Slave 
Law.  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  The  Kansas-Nebraska  Act.  Charles 
Sumner.  The  Dred  Scott  Decision.  National  Theories  During  the 
War.  The  Organic  Theory.  Sovereignty  in  the  Nation.  Practical 
Problems  of  Nationality.  Opposition  to  the  Administration.  Re 
construction  Theories:  Presidential,  State  Suicide,  Conquered  Province, 
Forfeited  Rights.  Confederate  Apologists.  Personal  Memoirs,  North 
and  South.  Civil  Service  Reform.  Thomas  A.  Jenckes.  George  Wil 
liam  Curtis.  Tariff  Reform.  David  A.  Wells.  William  G.  Sumner. 
The  Currency.  Agrarian  Agitation.  Bimetallism.  The  Knights  of 
Labor.  The  Trusts.  The  Disfranchisement  of  the  Negro.  New 
Doctrines.  Henry  George.  The  Income  Tax.  Edward  Bellamy. 
Criticism  of  Governmental  Administration.  Imperialism  and  Expan 
sion.  The  Granger  Movement.  Populism.  Progressivism.  .  .  337 

CHAPTER  XXII 

LINCOLN 

By  NATHANIEL  WRIGHT  STEPHENSON,  Professor  of  History 
in  the  College  of  Charleston. 

The  Mystery  of  Lincoln's  Temperament.  His  Lack  of  Precocity.  Juve 
nilia.  Religion.  Pioneer  Loneliness.  Mystical  Faith.  First  Period 
of  Maturity.  Comic  Writings.  Spiritual  Enthusiasm  for  the  Law. 
Literature  Applied  to  Practical  Tasks.  Second  Period  of  Maturity. 
The  Great  Speeches  of  1 858- 1 860.  The  Eclipse  of  the  Winter  of  1 860- 
61.  The  First  Inaugural.  Lincoln's  Final  Manner.  Possible  Influ 
ence  of  Seward.  ....  .....  367 

CHAPTER  XXIII 

EDUCATION  » 

By  PAUL  MONROE,  PhD.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  the  History 
of  Education  in  Teachers  College,  Columbia  Uni 
versity. 

American  Education  Primarily  Institutional.  The  Colonies.  Virginia. 
Pennsylvania.  New  Netherland  and  New  York.  New  England. 
The  Massachusetts  Law  of  1647.  The  Apprentice  System.  Elemen 
tary  Schools.  Latin  Grammar  Schools.  Ezekiel  Cheever.  Christo 
pher  Dock.  The  New  England  Primer.  Colonial  Colleges.  Franklin 
on  Education.  Samuel  Johnson.  William  Smith.  The  Revolution. 
Early  National  Legislation.  The  Positions  of  the  Fathers.  Thomas 
Jefferson.  DeWitt  Clinton.  The  Lancastrian  System.  Pestalozzian 
Influences.  Textbooks.  Noah  Webster.  Lindley  Murray.  Jedidiah 
Morse.  Nicholas  Pike.  Law  Schools.  Medical  Schools.  Private 


Contents 


Societies.  Educational  Periodicals.  The  American  Journal  of  Educa 
tion.  Labour  and  Education.  Practical  and  Physical  Education. 
Educational  Reports.  Horace  Mann.  Henry  Barnard.  Technical 
Literature  of  Education.  Free  Schools.  Education  for  Girls.  Emma 
Hart  Willard.  Mary  Lyon.  State  Universities.  College  Problems. 
Great  College  Presidents.  Lyceums.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  Im 
aginative  Literature  Dealing  with  Education.  Henry  Wadsworth. 
Longfellow.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  Locke  Amsden.  The  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster.  College  Secret  Societies.  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  Memoirs 
by  Educators.  Popular  Problems  of  Education.  The  Education  of 
Henry  Adams.  Books  for  and  about  Children.  The  Literature  of  the 
Immigrant.  Important  Writers  on  Educational  Topics.  William 
James.  G.  Stanley  Hall.  Edward  L.  Thorndike.  William  T.  Harris. 
John  Dewey.  Foreign  Observers.  General  Conclusions.  .  .  .  385 


Book  III  (Continued] 

CHAPTER  VIII 

Mark  Twain 


SAMUEL  LANGHORNE  CLEMENS,  more  widely  known 
as  Mark  Twain,  was  of  the  "bully  breed"  which  Whit 
man  had  prophesied.  Writing  outside  "the  genteel 
tradition,"  he  avowedly  sought  to  please  the  masses,  and  he 
was  elected  to  his  high  place  in  American  literature  by  a  tre 
mendous  popular  vote,  which  was  justified  even  in  the  opinion 
of  severe  critics  by  his  exhibition  of  a  masterpiece  or  so  not 
unworthy  of  Le  Sage  or  Cervantes.  Time  will  diminish  his 
bulk  as  it  must  that  of  every  author  of  twenty -five  volumes; 
but  the  great  public  which  discovered  him  still  cherishes  most 
of  his  books ;  and  his  works,  his  character,  and  his  career  have 
now,  and  will  continue  to  have,  in  addition  to  their  strictly 
literary  significance,  a  large  illustrative  value,  which  has  been 
happily  emphasized  by  Albert  Bigelow  Paine's  admirable 
biography  and  collection  of  letters.  Mark  Twain  is  one  of  our 
great  representative  men.  He  is  a  fulfilled  promise  of  Ameri 
can  life.  He  proves  the  virtues  of  the  land  and  the  society  in 
which  he  was  born  and  fostered.  He  incarnates  the  spirit  of 
an  epoch  of  American  history  when  the  nation,  territorially 
and  spiritually  enlarged,  entered  lustily  upon  new  adventures. 
In  the  retrospect  he  looms  for  us  with  Whitman  and  Lincoln, 
recognizably  his  countrymen,  out  of  the  shadows  of  the  Civil 
War,  an  unmistakable  native  son  of  an  eager,  westward- 
moving  people — unconventional,  self-reliant,  mirthful,  profane, 


VOL.    Ill — I 


Mark  Twain 


realistic,  cynical,  boisterous,  popular,  tender-hearted,  touched 
with  chivalry,  and  permeated  to  the  marrow  of  his  bones  with 
the  sentiment  of  democratic  society  and  with  loyalty  to  Ameri 
can  institutions. 

By  his  birth  at  Florida,  Missouri,  30  November,  1835,  he 
was  a  Middle- Westerner;  but  by  his  inheritance  from  the  rest 
less,  sanguine,  unprosperous  Virginian,  his  father,  who  had 
drifted  with  his  family  and  slaves  through  Kentucky  and 
Tennessee,  he  was  a  bit  of  a  Southerner  and  still  more  of  a  mi 
grant  and  a  seeker  of  fortune.  His  boyhood  he  spent  in  the 
indolent  semi-Southern  town  of  Hannibal,  Missouri,  which,  as 
he  fondly  represents  it,  slept  for  the  most  part  like  a  cat  in  the 
sun,  but  stretched  and  rubbed  its  eyes  when  the  Mississippi 
steamboats  called,  teasing  his  imagination  with  hints  of  the 
unexplored  reaches  of  the  river.  When  in  1847  his  father  died 
in  poverty  brightened  by  visions  of  wealth  from  the  sale  of 
his  land  in  Tennessee,  the  son  was  glad  to  drop  his  lessons  and 
go  to  work  in  the  office  of  the  Hannibal  Journal.  There, 
mainly  under  his  visionary  brother  Orion,  he  served  as  printer 
and  assistant  editor  for  the  next  six  years,  and  in  verse  and 
satirical  skits  made  the  first  trials  of  his  humour.  In  1853, 
having  promised  his  mother  with  hand  on  the  Testament  "not 
to  throw  a  card  or  drink  a  drop  of  liquor,  "  he  set  out  on  an  ex 
cursion  into  the  world,  and  worked  his  way  for  three  or  four 
years  as  printer  in  St.  Louis,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Keokuk, 
and  Cincinnati. 

Through  the  winter  of  1856-7  he  pleased  himself  with  a 
project  for  making  his  fortune  by  collecting  cocoa  at  the  head 
waters  of  the  Amazon;  and  in  the  spring  of  1857  he  actually 
took  passage  on  the  Paul  Jones  for  New  Orleans.  But  falling 
into  conversation  with  the  pilot,  Horace  Bixby,  he  engaged  him 
self  with  characteristic  impulsiveness  as  an  apprentice  to  that 
exacting,  admired,  and,  as  it  then  seemed  to  him,  magnificently 
salaried  king  of  the  river.  In  return  for  five  hundred  dollars 
payable  out  of  his  first  wages  Bixby  undertook  to  teach  him  the 
Mississippi  from  New  Orleans  to  St.  Louis  so  that  he  should 
have  it  ' '  by  heart. ' '  He  mastered  his  twelve  hundred  miles  of 
shifting  current,  and  became  a  licensed  pilot.  In  the  process 
he  acquired  without  the  slightest  consciousness  of  its  uses 
his  richest  store  of  literary  material. 


Life  in  the  West  3 

''In  that  brief,  sharp  schooling,"  he  wrote  many  years  later,  "I 
got  personally  and  familiarly  acquainted  with  all  the  different  types 
of  human  nature  that  are  to  be  found  in  fiction,  biography,  or  his 
tory.  When  I  find  a  well-drawn  character  in  fiction  or  biography, 
I  generally  take  a  warm  personal  interest  in  him,  for  the  reason  that 
I  have  known  him  before — met  him  on  the  river. " 


This  chapter  of  his  experience  was  ended  abruptly  by  the  out 
break  of  the  Civil  War  and  the  closing  of  the  river.  His  brief 
and  inglorious  part  in  the  ensuing  conflict  he  has  described, 
with  decorations,  in  his  Private  History  of  a  Campaign  that 
Failed,  a  little  work  which  indicates  that  he  rushed  to  the  aid 
of  the  Confederacy  without  much  conviction,  and  that  two 
weeks  later  he  rushed  away  with  still  less  regret.  Eventually, 
it  should  be  remarked,  General  Grant  became  his  greatest  liv 
ing  hero,  and  his  attitude  towards  slavery  became  as  passion 
ately  Northern  as  that  of  Mrs.  Stowe. 

Meanwhile  he  went  West.  On  26  July,  1861 ,  he  was  sitting 
on  the  mail-bags  behind  the  six  galloping  horses  of  the  over 
land  stage  headed  for  Carson  City,  Nevada,  as  assistant  to  his 
brother  Orion,  who  through  the  good  offices  of  a  friend  in 
Lincoln's  cabinet  had  been  appointed  Territorial  secretary. 
On  his  arrival,  finding  himself  without  salary  or  duties,  he 
^explored  the  mining  camps  and  caught  the  prevailing  passion 
for  huge  quick  wealth.  First  he  bought  "wild-cat"  stock; 
then  he  located  a  vast  timber  claim  on  Lake  Tahoe;  then  he 
tried  quartz  mining  in  the  silver  regions;  prospected  for  gold 
in  the  placer  country;  and,  in  daily  expectation  of  striking  it 
fabulously  rich,  sank  his  brother's  salary  in  the  most  promising 
"leads." 

That  his  claims  did  not  "pan  out"  well  is  clear  from  his  ac 
cepting  in  1862  a  position  as  local  reporter  for  the  Virginia  City 
Enterprise  at  twenty-five  dollars  a  week,  having  commended 
himself  to  the  editor  by  a  series  of  letters  signed  "Josh." 
Thus  began  his  literary  career.  In  reporting  for  this  paper  the 
sessions  of  the  Legislature  at  Carson  City  he  first  employed 
the  signature  "Mark  Twain,"  a  name  previously  used  by  a 
pilot-correspondent  of  the  New  Orleans  Picayu ne  but  ultimately 
commemorating  the  leadsman's  cry  on  the  Mississippi.  His 
effervescent  spirits,  excited  by  the  stirring  and  heroically  con- 


4  Mark  Twain 

vivial  life  of  a  community  of  pioneers,  found  easy  outlet  in  the 
robust  humour  and  slashing  satire  of  frontier  journalism.  In 
1 863  Artemus  Ward x  spent  three  glorious  weeks  revelling  with 
the  newspaper  men  in  Virginia  City,  recognized  the  talent  of 
Mark  Twain,  and  encouraged  him  to  send  his  name  eastward 
with  a  contribution  to  the  New  York  Sunday  Mercury.  A 
duel  occasioned  by  some  journalistic  vivacities  resulted  in  his 
migration  in  1864  to  San  Francisco,  where  in  1864  and  1865 
he  wrote  for  The  Morning  Call,  The  Golden  Era,  and  The  Cali- 
fornian;  and  fraternized  with  the  brilliant  young  coterie  of 
which  Bret  Harte2  was  recognized  as  the  most  conspicuous  light. 
In  a  pocket-hunting  excursion  in  January,  1865,  he  picked  up  a 
very  few  nuggets  and  the  nucleus  for  the  story  of  Jim  Smiley 
and  his  Jumping  Frog,  which  appeared  in  the  New  York  Satur 
day  Press  in  November  and  swiftly  attained  wide  celebrity. 
In  the  following  spring  he  visited  the  Sandwich  Islands  on  a 
commission  from  the  Sacramento  Union,  called  upon  his  first 
king,  explored  the  crater  of  Kilauea,  struck  up  a  friendship  with 
the  American  ministers  to  China  and  Japan,  and  made  a  great 
' '  scoop ' '  by  interviewing  a  group  of  shipwrecked  sailors  in  the 
hospital  at  Honolulu.  Later  he  wrote  up  the  story  for  Harper's 
Magazine;  his  appearance  there  in  1866  he  calls  his  debut  as  a 
literary  person. 

Returning  to  San  Francisco,  he  made  his  first  appearance  as 
a  humorous  lecturer  in  a  discourse  on  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
delivered  with  his  sober,  inimitable,  irresistible  drawl  to  a 
crowded  and  applausive  house  on  the  evening  of  2  October, 
1866.  From  this  point  his  main  course  was  determined. 
Realizing  that  he  had  a  substantial  literary  capital,  he  set  out 
to  invest  it  so  that  it  would  in  every  sense  of  the  word  yield  the 
largest  returns  obtainable.  To  the  enterprise  of  purveying 
literary  entertainment  he,  first  in  America,  applied  the  wide- 
ranging  vision  and  versatile  talents  of  our  modern  men  of 
action  and  captains  of  industry:  collecting  his  "raw  material," 
distributing  it  around  the  world  from  the  lecture  platform,  send 
ing  it  to  the  daily  press,  reworking  it  into  book  form,  inventing 
his  own  type-setting  machinery,  and  controlling  his  own  print 
ing,  publishing,  and  selling  agencies.  He  did  not  foresee  this 
all  in  1866 ;  but  it  must  have  begun  to  dawn. 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xix.  »  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 


Later  Life  5 

By  repeating  his  Sandwich  Islands  lecture  widely  in  Cali 
fornia  and  Nevada  he  provided  himself  with  means  to  travel, 
and  revisited  his  home,  returning  by  way  of  Panama  and  New 
York.  In  May,  1867,  he  published  his  first  book,  The  Cele 
brated  Jumping  Frog  of  Calaveras  County,  and  Other  Sketches, 
and  lectured  in  Cooper  Institute.  Then  on  8  June  he  sailed  on 
the  Quaker  City  for  a  five  months'  excursion  through  the 
Mediterranean  to  the  Holy  Land,  first  reported  in  letters  to 
The  Alta-California  and  the  New  York  Tribune,  and  immortal 
ized  by  his  book  Innocents  Abroad.  On  2  February,  1870,  he 
married  his  most  sympathetic  reader  and  severest  censor, 
Olivia  Langdon  of  Elmira,  New  York,  a  sister  of  one  of  the 
Quaker  City  pilgrims  who  had  shown  him  her  photograph  in  the 
Bay  of  Smyrna.  After  a  brief  unprofitable  attempt  to  edit  a 
newspaper  in  Buffalo,  he  moved  in  1871  to  Hartford,  Connecti 
cut,  and  in  1874  built  there  the  home  in  which  he  lived  for  the 
next  seventeen  years. 

He  formed  a  close  association  with  his  neighbour  Charles 
Dudley  Warner1 ;  was  taken  under  the  editorial  wing  of  William 
Dean  Howells2and  into  his  intimate  friendship;  contributed 
to  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  Harper's  Magazine,  and  The  North 
American  Review;  and  ultimately  made  some  progress  with 
such  festive  New  Englanders  as  O.  W.  Holmes,3  F.  J.  Child,4 
and  T.  B.  Aldrich5;  but  his  head  was  white  before  he  became  as 
much  of  a  lion  in  Boston  and  New  York  as  he  had  been  in 
Carson  City  and  San  Francisco.  At  various  times  he  made 
extended  sojourns  in  England,  Italy,  France,  Germany,  and 
Austria,  particularly  in  his  later  years  in  seasons  of  pecuniary 
retrenchment.  He  reaped  a  fortune  by  contracting  for  the 
publication  of  Grant's  Memoirs  and  his  royalties  were  steadily 
large;  but  bad  ventures  in  his  publishing  business,  his  some 
what  lavish  style  of  living,  and  his  unperfected  type-setting 
machine,  in  which  he  sank  $200,000,  pushed  him  finally  into 
bankruptcy.  He  had  extended  his  reputation  in  1873  by 
lecturing  for  two  months  in  London ;  he  made  a  big  reading  tour 
with  G.  W.  Cable6  in  1884-5;  and  in  1895,  at  the  age  of  sixty, 


'  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xm.  3  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xi. 

3  See  3ook  II,  Chap.  xxm.  «  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xxm. 

s  See  Book  III,  Chaps,  vi,  vn,  and  x.  6  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 


6  Mark  Twain 

disdaining  the  advantages  of  bankruptcy,  he  set  out  on  a  lectur 
ing  tour  of  the  world  which  took  on  something  of  the  aspect 
of  a  royal  progress  and  ended  in  the  triumphant  discharge  of  all 
his  obligations.  Then  he  collected  another  fortune  and  built 
himself  his  mansion  Stormfield  in  Redding,  Connecticut. 

In  his  last  years  he  spent  a  good  deal  of  time  in  New  York 
and  Washington,  and  a  variety  of  causes  kept  him  pretty 
steadily  in  the  public  eye  as  a  figure  of  national  interest:  his 
valiant  assumption  of  his  debts,  his  great  tour,  his  growing 
habit  of  commenting  on  public  affairs,  the  publication  of  sec 
tions  of  his  autobiography,  his  domestic  bereavements,  and  the 
foreign  tributes  and  honours  which  gradually  assured  his  some 
what  incredulous  countrymen  that  he  was  a  great  man  of 
letters.  His  first  academic  recognition  had  come  from  Yale 
University,  which  created  him  Master  of  Arts  in  1888;  in 
1901  Yale  and  in  1902  the  University  of  Missouri  conferred 
upon  him  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Letters;  but  the  crowning 
academic  glory  fell  in  1907  when  the  University  of  Oxford  called 
him  across  the  sea  and  robed  him  in  scarlet  and  made  him 
Doctor  of  Literature,  amid,  as  he  noted,  "a  very  satisfactory 
hurrah"  from  the  audience.  On  his  return  from  a  trip  to  the 
Bermudas  he  died  21  April,  1910. 

Mark  Twain's  literary  independence  is  generally  conceded. 
Except  for  a  certain  flavour  of  Dickens  in  The  Gilded  Age  there 
is  hardly  an  indication  of  any  important  relationship  between 
him  and  modern  writers.  He  was  a  lover  of  the  elemental  in 
the  midst  of  the  refinements  of  an  English  and  an  American 
Victorian  Age.  "  I  can't  stand  George  Eliot  and  Hawthorne 
and  those  people,"  he  said.  "And  as  for  'The  Bostonians,'  I 
would  rather  be  damned  to  John  Bunyan's  heaven  than  read 
that. ' '  Modern  fiction  generally  impressed  him  as  namby-pam 
by  and  artificial.  Jane  Austen  was  his  pet  abhorrence,  but  he 
also  detested  Scott,  primarily  for  his  Toryism,  and  he  poked 
fun  at,  Cooper  for  his  inaccuracies.  His  taste  for  books  was 
eminently  masculine.  The  literary  nourishment  of  his  style 
he  appears  to  have  found  chiefly  in  history,  travel,  biography, 
and  such  works  of  imagination  as  one  puts  on  a  ' '  five-foot  shelf ' ' 
—Shakespeare  and  the  Bible,  Suetonius's  Lives  of  The  Ccesars, 
Malory,  Cellini,  Don  Quixote,  Gil  Bias,  the  Memoirs  of  C&sanova, 
Lecky 's  History  of  Civilization,  and  Carlyle's  French  Revolution. 


Art  and  Aims  7 

In  his  prose  as  in  the  verse  of  Whitman  there  is  an  appear 
ance  of  free  improvisation  concealing  a  more  or  less  novel  and 
deliberate  art.  "So  far  as  I  know,"  wrote  W.  D.  Howells  in 
1901 ,"  Mr.  Clemens  is  the  first  writer  to  use  in  extended  writing 
the  fashion  we  all  use  in  thinking,  and  to  set  down  the  thing 
that  comes  into  his  mind  without  fear  or  favour  of  the  thing  that 
went  before,  or  the  thing  that  may  be  about  to  follow.  "  Be 
side  this  assertion  of  a  spontaneity  approaching  artlessness  let 
us  put  Professor  Matthews's  caution:  "His  colloquial  ease 
should  not  hide  from  us  his  mastery  of  all  the  devices  of  rhet 
oric.  "  In  a  letter  to  Aldrich  he  acknowledges  great  indebted 
ness  to  Bret  Harte,  "who  trimmed  and  trained  and  schooled  me 
patiently  until  he  changed  me  from  an  awkward  utterer  of 
coarse  grotesquenesses  to  a  writer  of  paragraphs  and  chapters 
that  have  found  a  certain  favour  in  the  eyes  of  even  some  of  the 
very  decentest  people  in  the  land. "  Finally,  let  the  reader  who 
doubts  whether  he  was  conscious  of  his  own  art  read  carefully 
his  little  article,  How  to  Tell  a  Story,  beginning :  "  I  do  not  claim 
that  I  can  tell  a  story  as  it  ought  to  be  told.  I  only  claim  to 
know  how  a  story  ought  to  be  told,  for  I  have  been  almost 
daily  in  the  company  of  the  most  expert  story-tellers  for  many 
years.  "  The  art  which  he  had  learned  of  such  American  mas 
ters  of  oral  rhetoric  as  Artemus  Ward,  John  Phoenix, '  and  J.  H. 
Riley  he  tested  and  developed  in  print  and  by  word  of  mouth 
with  constant  reference  to  its  immediate  effect  upon  a  large 
audience.  Those  principles  the  observance  of  which  he  found 
essential  to  holding  and  entertaining  his  public  he  adopted  and 
followed;  but  literary  "laws"  which  proved  irrelevant  to  his 
business  as  entertainer  of  the  masses  he  disregarded  at  pleasure 
as  negligible  or  out  of  place  in  a  democratic  ^Esthetic.  Howells 
calls  him  "the  Lincoln  of  our  literature";  and  with  that  hint 
we  may  add  that  his  power  and  limitations  are  alike  related  to 
his  magnanimous  ambition  to  beguile  all  the  people  all  the  time. 

Let  us  begin  our  illustration  of  his  literary  character  with 
a  review  of  his  five  great  books  of  travel.  Against  every  one 
of  them  the  charge  might  be  brought  that  it  is  ill-composed: 
the  chapters  follow  a  certain  chronological  and  geographical 
order;  but  the  paragraphs  frequently  seem  to  owe  their  juxta 
position  to  the  most  casual  association  of  ideas.  This  license, 

1  See  B«0k  II,  Chap.  xix. 


8  Mark  Twain 

however,  is  the  law  and  studied  practice  of  his  humour.  "To 
bring  incongruities  and  absurdities  together  in  a  wandering  and 
sometimes  purposeless  way,  and  seem  innocently  unaware  that 
they  are  absurdities,  is  the  basis,"  he  declares,  "of  the  Ameri 
can  art."  He  is  speaking  here  specifically  of  the  humorous 
story ;  but  obviously  he  applies  the  same  principle  to  the  book 
of  travel,  which,  as  he  conceives  it,  is  a  joyous  miscellany.  It 
is  a  miscellany  but  with  ingredients  preconsidered  and  formu- 
lable.  He  is  as  inflexible  as  Aristotle  on  the  importance  of 
choosing  a  great  subject.  He  holds  with  the  classicists  that 
the  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man.  He  traverses  in  each 
book  territory  of  world-wide  interest.  He  describes  what 
meets  his  eye  with  rapid,  vivid,  unconventional  eloquence. 
He  sketches  the  historical  background  in  a  highly  personal 
fashion  and  gives  to  his  interlarded  legends  an  individual 
twist.  While  he  imparts  a  good  quantity  of  information,  useful 
and  diverting,  he  keeps  the  thread  of  his  personal  adventures 
spinning,  rhapsodizes  for  a  page,  then  clowns  it  for  another,  or 
introduces  an  elaborate  burlesque  on  the  enthusiasm  of  previous 
travellers.  It  is  a  prepared  concoction. 

The  Innocents  Abroad  justified  the  formula  on  which  it  was 
constructed  by  selling  nearly  a  hundred  thousand  copies  at 
three  dollars  and  a  half  apiece  within  the  first  three  years. 
Its  initial  success  was  due  partly  to  its  novelty  and  partly  to 
the  wide  interest  which  the  excursion  itself  had  excited.  Both 
these  advantages  it  has  now  relinquished,  yet,  as  his  biographer 
tells  us,  it  remains  the  most  popular  of  all  Mark  Twain's  travel 
books,  and  still  "outsells  every  other  book  in  its  particular 
field."  Time  has  not  reduced  the  rich  variety  of  its  famous 
topics,  though  time  has  somewhat  altered  the  nature  of  cu 
riosity  with  regard  to  the  conduct  of  the  pilgrims ;  but  even 
though  their  type  of  tourist  were  now  quite  extinct  one  might 
still  gratify  the  historical  sense  by  acquaintance  with  a  repre 
sentative  group  of  Americans  on  a  tremendous  picnic  with 
spirits  high  in  rebound  from  the  long  depression  of  the  Civil 
War.  One  hears  in  the  book  the  rollicking  voice  of  the  ex- 
pilot,  ex -miner,  the  joyously  insolent  Western  American,  eman 
cipated  from  all  terror  of  the  minor  or  Sunday-school  vices, 
fortified  by  certain  tolerant  democratic  standards  of  his  own, 
well  acquainted  with  the  great  American  cities,  equipped  with 


" Innocents  Abroad"  9 

ideas  of  natural  beauty  and  sublimity  acquired  on  the  Missis 
sippi,  the  Great  Plains,  the  Rockies,  the  Pacific,  the  Sandwich 
Islands,  setting  out  to  see  with  his  own  unawed  eyes  how  much 
truth  there  is  in  the  reported  wonders  of  the  "little  old  world." 
Mark  Twain  describes  Europe  and  the  East  for  men,  roughly 
speaking,  like  himself.  He  does  not  undertake  to  tell  them  how 
they  ought  to  look  at  objects  of  interest,  but  quite  resolutely 
how  these  objects  of  interest  strike  a  thoroughly  honest  Western- 
American  eye.  He  is  obliged  to  report  that  the  barbers,  billiard 
tables,  and  hotel  accommodations  of  Paris  are  inferior;  that  the 
paintings  of  the  Old  Masters  are  often  in  a  bad  state  of  repair 
and,  at  best,  betray  to  a  democrat  a  nauseous  adulation  of 
princely  patrons;  that  the  French  grisettes  wear  mustaches; 
that  Vesuvius  and  Lake  Como  are  nothing  to  Kilauea  and  Lake 
Tahoe;  that  priest-ridden  Italy  is  a  "museum  of  magnificence 
and  misery ' ' ;  and  that  under  close  inspection  the  glamour  of  the 
Holy  Land  gives  way  to  vivid  impressions  of  fleas,  beggars, 
hungry  dogs,  sandy  wastes,  and  the  odours  of  camels.  But  this 
young  traveller  with  so  much  of  the  iconoclastic  Don  Juan 
in  him  has  also  a  strain  of  Childe  Harold.  For  him  as  for 
Byron  the  deepest  charm  of  the  old  world  is  the  charm  of 
desolation  and  decay,  felt  when  the  dingy  palaces  of  Venetian 
doges  or  the  ruined  marbles  of  Athens  are  bathed  in  the  moon 
light.  And  he  like  Byron  gains  many  an  effect  of  his  violent 
humour  by  the  abruptness  of  his  transitions  from  the  sublime 
to  the  ridiculous  or  vice  versa.  He  interprets,  for  example,  with 
noble  gravity  the  face  of  the  Sphinx : 


After  years  of  waiting,  it  was  before  me  at  last.  The  great  face 
was  so  sad,  so  earnest,  so  longing,  so  patient.  There  was  a  dignity 
not  of  earth  in  its  mien,  and  in  its  countenance  a  benignity  such  as 
never  anything  human  wore.  It  was  stone,  but  it  seemed  sentient. 
If  ever  image  of  stone  thought,  it  was  thinking.  .  .  .  All  who 
know  what  pathos  there  is  in  memories  of  days  that  are  accomplished 
and  faces  that  have  vanished — albeit  only  a  trifling  score  of  years 
gone  by — will  have  some  appreciation  of  the  pathos  that  dwells  in 
those  grave  eyes  that  look  so  steadfastly  back  upon  the  things  they 
knew  before  History  was  born — before  Tradition  had  being — things 
that  were,  and  forms  that  moved,  in  a  vague  era  which  even  Poetry 
and  Romance  scarce  know  of — and  passed  one  by  one  away  and 


io  Mark  Twain 

left  the  stony  dreamer  solitary  in  the  midst  of  a  strange  new  age, 
and  uncomprehended  scenes. 

But  one  turns  the  page  and  comes  upon  the  engineer  who  feeds 
his  locomotive  with  mummies,  occasionally  calling  out  pet 
tishly,  "D — n  these  plebeians,  they  don't  burn  worth  a  cent- 
pass  out  a  king." 

In  Roughing  It  (1872)  he  chose  a  subject  doubtless  less 
interesting  to  some  good  people  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard  than  a 
European  tour — the  narrative  of  his  journey  across  the  plains 
to  Carson  City,  and  his  life  and  adventures  in  Nevada,  Cali 
fornia,  and  the  Sandwich  Islands.  Various  critics,  however, 
have  preferred  it  to  Innocents  Abroad  as  a  truer  book;  and  in  a 
sense  the  preference  is  justifiable.  As  literal  history,  to  be  sure, 
or  as  autobiography,  it  is  untrustworthy.  Mark  Twain  follows 
his  own  advice  to  Rudyard  Kipling:  "Young  man,  first  get 
your  facts;  then  distort  them  as  you  please."  He  distorts  the 
facts  in  Roughing  It,  and  vitalizes  them  by  a  poetical  enlarge 
ment  and  interpretation  thoroughly  characteristic  of  native 
Western  humour.  In  painting  frontier  manners,  no  longer  an 
outsider,  as  he  was  in  Europe,  he  abandons  the  attitude  of  one 
exposing  illusions,  and  seeks  to  exhibit  the  West  under  the 
glamour  of  imagination.  His  coyote,  turning  with  a  smile 
upon  the  pursuing  hound  and  vanishing  with  a  "rushing  sound, 
and  the  sudden  splitting  of  a  long  crack  in  the  atmosphere  "- 
his  coyote  is  a  beast  of  fable;  so  is  his  jackrabbit ;  so  is  his  bron 
cho;  so  is  his  Brigham  Young.  On  all  his  pioneers,  his  stage- 
drivers,  his  miners,  his  desperadoes,  his  boon-companions  he 
has  breathed  with  a  heroizing  emotion  recollected  in  literary 
tranquillity.  In  the  clear  light  of  the  vanished  El  Dorado  of 
his  youth  they  and  their  mountains  and  forests  loom  for  him 
larger  than  common  nature,  more  passionate,  more  picturesque. 
A  Tramp  Abroad  (1880)  sprang  from  no  such  fund  of  de 
lightful  experience  and  mellow  recollection  but  from  an  ex 
pedition  to  Europe  deliberately  undertaken  in  order  to  escape 
from  the  growing  harassment  of  business  responsibilities  and  to 
collect  material  for  a  book.  Before  he  could  work  himself  into 
a  satisfactory  writing  mood  he  found  it  necessary  to  invent  a 
new  humorous  attitude  and  literary  character.  His  new  in 
vention  has  three  parts.  In  the  first  place,  he  announces  him- 


"  A  Tramp  Abroad  "  1 1 

self  an  enthusiastic  and  intrepid  pedestrian  but  actually  presents 
himself  as  a  languid  and  timorous  person  travelling  luxuriously 
with  agent  and  courier  by  railway,  steamboat,  carriage,  raft, 
or  by  any  means  to  avoid  the  use  of  his  legs.  Secondly,  he 
professes  himself  a  devoted  student  of  art  and  decorates  his 
pages  with  infantile  sketches.  Finally,  he  assumes  the  air  of  a 
philologist  seriously  studying  the  German  language.  The  first 
of  these  devices  he  handles  in  many  places  ingeniously  and 
pleasantly,  presenting  an  amusing  satire  on  the  indolent  middle- 
aged  tourist  who  climbs  his  Alps  by  telescope  and  gets  his 
thrills  on  his  hotel  veranda  out  of  the  books  of  Edward  Whym- 
per;  but  in  the  elaborate  burlesque  ascent  of  the  RifHeberg  the 
humour  becomes  crudely  farcical  and  tiresome.  His  drawings 
are  not  very  expressive;  and  from  their  fewness  it  may  be  in 
ferred  that  he  discovered  the  fact.  Some  fellow  philologists 
have  found  inexhaustible  satisfaction  in  the  German  legends  in 
German-English  and  in  the  appendices  treating  of  "the  awful 
German  language"  and  the  German  newspaper — possibly  also 
in  the  violent  attack  on  Wagnerian  opera.  Other  favourite 
passages  of  various  qualities  are  those  dealing  with  the  grand 
affair  between  M.  Gambetta  and  M.  Fourtou,  the  sunrise  on  Mt. 
Riga,  and  the  47-mile  hunt  for  a  sock  in  Chapter  XIII ;  but  the 
humorous  jewel  of  the  collection  is  "Baker's  Bluejay  Yarn"  in 
Chapter  III — a  trivial  incident  touched  with  imagination  and 
related  in  a  supremely  delicious  manner.  The  serious  writing, 
as  in  the  description  of  the  Jungfrau  and  Heidelberg  and  the 
student  duels,  is  so  good  that  one  wishes  there  were  more 
of  it. 

For  Life  on  the  Mississippi  (1883)  Mark  Twain  drew  again 
from  the  treasure  of  Western  material  which  he  had  amassed 
before  he  became  a  professional  humorist;  and  that  distin 
guished  connoisseur,  the  ex-Emperor  William  II  of  Germany, 
therein  agreeing  with  the  portier  of  the  author's  lodging  in 
Berlin,  informed  the  author  that  it  was  his  favourite  American 
book.  More  strictly  speaking,  it  is  the  first  twenty  of  the 
fifty-five  chapters  that  do  for  the  Mississippi  Valley  what 
Roughing  It  does  for  the  Far  West,  namely,  invest  it  with  the 
charm  of  recollected  experience  and  imaginative  apprehension. 
The  latter  part  of  the  book,  which  might  have  been  called  "The 
Mississippi  Revisited, "  is  the  journalistic  record  of  an  excursion 


12  Mark  Twain 

made  with  a  stenographer  in  1882;  it  contains  interesting  auto 
biographical  notes,  admirable  descriptive  passages,  a  remarkable 
diatribe  on  Sir  Walter  Scott  for  perpetuating  outworn  chivalry 
in  the  South,  an  account  of  a  meeting  with  G.  W.  Cable  and 
Joel  Chandler  Harris  in  New  Orleans,  and  miscellaneous  yarns 
and  information ;  but  it  is  of  distinctly  secondary  value.  Stead 
ily  throughout  the  first  twenty  chapters  the  writer  is  elate  with 
his  youthful  memories  of  the  drowsy  towns  by  the  river,  the 
old  barbaric  raftsmen,  the  pride  and  power  of  the  ancient  race 
of  pilots,  and  the  high  art  and  mystery  of  piloting  those  in 
finitely  various  waters  in  the  days  before  the  war.  The  moon 
light,  one  of  his  characters  fancies,  was  brighter  before  the  war; 
and  he  himself,  travelled  now  and  acquainted  with  glory,  has 
experienced,  he  believes,  nothing  so  satisfying  to  his  inmost 
sense  as  his  life  in  that  epical  calling  with  its  manly  rigours,  its 
robust  hilarity,  its  deep,  wholesome,  unreflective  happiness. 
The  spirit  that,  years  before,  inspired  Emerson's  blandly  ex 
pressed  desire  to  make  Concord  and  Boston  Bay  as  memorable 
as  the  storied  places  of  Europe  becomes  in  these  pages  clear, 
strong,  resounding:  it  is  the  new  national  pride  declaring  the 
spiritual  independence  of  America.  Not  in  peevish  envy,  with 
no  anxiety  about  the  ultimate  answer,  out  of  his  knowledge  and 
the  depths  of  his  conviction  Mark  Twain  cries:  "What  are  all 
the  rivers  of  Damascus  to  the  Father  of  Waters?  " 

The  material  for  Following  the  Equator  (1897)  he  collected 
under  the  strain  of  debt,  ill  health,  and  the  fatigues  of  the  im 
mense  lecture-tour  undertaken  in  1895.  In  Australasia,  to 
which  the  first  half  of  the  book  is  given,  the  people  impress  him 
as  Englishmen  democratized,  that  is  to  say,  as  Americans,  and 
the  cities  and  towns  offer  little  noteworthy.  In  order  to  exhibit 
novelties  he  is  obliged  to  present  the  history  of  the  early  set 
tlers,  the  aborigines,  and  the  fauna ;  and  as  he  gets  up  his  facts 
by  visits  to  museums  and  hasty  digestion  of  Australasian  liter 
ature,  his  treatment  strikes  one  as,  for  him,  noticeably  second 
hand  and  uninspired.  He  also  introduces  later  a  good  deal  of 
"lifted"  material  of  a  vivid  sort  in  his  account  of  the  Sepoy 
Mutiny,  Suttee,  and  the  Thugs — and  here  we  may  note  his 
taste  for  the  collection  of  atrocious  incident.  India,  however, 
for  which  Kipling  had  sharpened  his  appetite,  inspired  him  to 
the  task  of  imparting  his  oppressed  sense  of  her  historic  and 


Fiction  J3 

scenic  immensities,  stricken  with  plagues,  famines,  ferocious 
beasts,  superstitions,  over-population,  and  swooning  heat: 

a  haunting  sense  of  the  myriads  of  human  lives  that  have  blossomed, 
and  withered,  and  perished  here,  repeating  and  repeating  and  re 
peating,  century  after  century,  and  age  after  age,  the  barren  and 
meaningless  process;  it  is  this  sense  that  gives  to  this  forlorn,  un 
comely  land  pow^er  to  speak  to  the  spirit  and  make  friends  with  it ; 
to  speak  to  it  with  a  voice  bitter  with  satire,  but  eloquent  with 
melancholy. 

There  are  satirical  and  witty  disquisitions  on  imperialistic 
morality  apropos  of  Madagascar,  the  Jameson  Raid,  Cecil 
Rhodes,  and  the  British  dealings  with  the  Boers.  The  bar 
barity  of  the  civilized  in  contact  with  the  so-called  backward 
peoples  excites  his  indignation,  but  history  and  travel  show  him 
its  universality  and  quiet  his  sensibilities  to  a  state  of  tolerant 
contempt  for  all  unregenerate  mankind:  " Christian  govern 
ments  are  as  frank  to-day,  as  open  and  above-board,  in  discuss 
ing  projects  for  raiding  each  other's  clothes-lines  as  ever  they 
were  before  the  Golden  Rule  came  smiling  into  this  inhospitable 
world  and  couldn't  get  a  night's  lodging  anywhere." 

Mark  Twain's  fiction,  a  large  and  highly  diversified  section 
of  his  total  output,  should  be  regarded  as,  hardly  less  than  the 
travel  books,  the  work  of  a  humorist  whose  most  characteristic 
form  was  a  medley  in  divers  keys.  His  critical  champions  used 
to  allege  that  recognition  of  his  sterling  literary  talent  was  de 
layed  by  his  reputation  as  a  creator  of  laughter.  At  the  present 
time  the  danger  is  perhaps  rather  that  some  of  his  novels  and 
tales  will  be  unduly  disparaged  precisely  because  criticism  has 
been  persuaded  to  take  them  too  seriously.  With  an  instinct 
for  an  ingenious  plot  and  unquestionable  power  of  characteriza 
tion  within  certain  limits,  Mark  Twain  sometimes  lacked  the 
ability  and  the  patience  and  even  the  desire  to  carry  a  long  piece 
of  fiction  through  in  the  key  on  which  he  began.  He  would  begin 
a  story,  for  example,  on  the  key  of  impressive  realism,  shift  to 
commonplace  melodrama,  and  end  with  roaring  farce;  and  this 
amounts  to  saying  that  he  did  not  himself  steadily  take  his 
fiction  writing  seriously.  He  sometimes  took  it  very  lightly, 
like  an  improvising  humorist;  and  the  discords  which  affect 


14  Maqfc:  Twain 

the  severely  critical  ear  as  blemishes  probably  struck  his  own 
ear  as  a  joke.  There  is  amusement  in  the  most  uneven  of  his 
novels  if  one  relaxes  to  the  point  of  reading  it  in  the  mixed 
moods  in  which  it  was  written. 

The  most  uneven  of  his  novels  is  The  Gilded  Age,  begun  in 
collaboration  with  Charles  Dudley  Warner  in  February,  1873, 
on  the  spur  of  a  dinner-table  challenge,  and  finished  in  the 
following  April.  The  authors  were  proud  of  their  performance ; 
and  it  has  admirable  points.  The  title  is  a  masterly  epigraph 
on  the  flushed,  corrupt  period  of  the  Reconstruction.  The 
stage  is  set  as  for  the  representation  of  "the  great  American 
novel,"  with  scenes  in  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Washington,  St. 
Louis,  and  villages  of  New  England  and  Tennessee.  The  plot 
is  designed  to  bring  typical  Easterners  and  Westerners  into 
diverting  sentimental,  financial,  and  political  relations.  There 
is  a  lively  satirical  play  upon  a  wide  range  of  clearly  conceived 
characters  and  caricatures,  exhibiting  most  of  the  elementary 
passions  from  love-making  and  fortune-hunting  to  bribing  Con 
gressmen  and  murder;  and  the  sanguine,  speculative  Colonel 
Sellers,  said  to  have  been  modelled  on  a  relative  of  Mark  Twain's 
but  certainly  also  modelled  on  Orion  Clemens  and  on  Mark 
Twain  himself,  is  an  American  rival  to  Micawber.  The  book 
bristles  with  interesting  intentions  and  accomplishments;  yet 
its  total  effect  is  a  bewildering  dissonance  of  moods  and  styles, 
which  fills  one  with  regret  that  Mark  Twain  did  not  cut  loose 
from  his  literary  partner  and  work  out  by  himself  the  story  of 
Obedstown,  Tennessee,  opened  by  him  with  a  rich  realistic  flow 
in  the  first  eleven  chapters.  With  all  its  demerits  on  its  head, 
the  novel  sold  forty  thousand  copies  within  a  couple  of  months 
after  publication,  and  a  play  built  around  the  character  of 
Sellers  was  immensely  successful  on  the  stage.  Later,  in  col 
laboration  with  Howells,  Mark  Twain  made  a  second  Sellers 
play  showing  the  hero  aspiring  to  an  English  earldom;  and  this 
he  worked  over  into  The  American  Claimant  (1891),  a  gener 
ally  farcical  romance  streaked  with  admirable  realistic  passages. 
One  may  mention  here  also,  as  springing  perhaps  from  ex 
perience  not  utterly  remote  from  that  of  Sellers,  Clemens's 
exhibition  of  the  effect  upon  character  produced  by  expectation 
of  unearned  wealth  in  two  capital  short  stories:  The  Man  that 
Corrupted  Hadleyburg  (1899)  and  The  $30,000  Bequest  (1904). 


'Tom  Sayvyer"  15 

Tom  Sawyer,  his  second  extended  effort  in  fiction  and  his 
first  masterpiece,  he  began  as  a  play  in  1872  and  published  in  its 
present  form  in  1876.  The  long  incubation  contributed  to  its 
unsurpassed  unity  of  tone.  But  the  decisive  fact  is  that  his 
irresponsible  and  frequently  extravagant  fancy  is  here  held  in 
check  by  a  serious  artistic  purpose,  namely,  to  make  an  essen 
tially  faithful  representation  of  the  life  of  a  real  boy  intimately 
known  to  him  by  memory  and  by  introspection  and  by  those 
deductions  of  the  imaginative  faculty  which  start  from  a  solid 
basis  of  actuality.  His  own  boyhood,  we  may  believe,  and 
that  of  his  companions  in  Hannibal,  lives  in  this  intensely 
vital  narrative.  It  is  significant  of  his  unwonted  austerity  in 
the  composition  that  he  wrote  to  Howells  on  its  completion: 
"It  is  not  a  boy's  book  at  all.  It  will  only  be  read  by  adults. 
It  is  only  written  for  adults."  He  had  some  justification  for 
feeling  that  his  newly  finished  manuscript  broke  a  long  taboo. 
He  had  taken  a  hero  who  was  neither  a  model  of  youthful  vir 
tues  nor  a  horrible  example  but  was  distinguished  chiefly  by 
pluck,  imagination,  and  vanity,  and  had  made  him  leader  of 
a  group  of  average  little  Missouri  rascals  running  loose  in  an 
ordinary  small  river  town  and  displaying,  among  other  sponta 
neous  impulses,  all  the  ' '  natural  cussedness ' '  of  boyhood.  Fur 
thermore  he  had  made  a  central  incident  of  a  rather  horrid 
murder.  Remembering  the  juvenile  fiction  of  the  Sunday- 
school  library,1  he  suspected  that  the  story  of  these  fighting, 
fibbing,  pilfering,  smoking,  swearing  scapegraces  was  not  for 
young  people.  But  Howells,  after  reading  about  Aunt  Polly, 
the  whitewashing  of  the  fence,  Tom's  schoolboy  love,  Huckand 
the  wart-cure,  and  the  pirates'  island,  ordered  the  profanity 
deleted,  and  declared  it  the  best  boy  story  ever  written ;  and  that 
was  near  the  truth.  In  the  two  sequels  Tom  Sawyer  Abroad 
(1894)  and  Tom  Sawyer,  Detective  (1896),  the  plots  are  rather 
flimsy  contrivances  of  the  humorous  fancy,  but  the  stories 
are  partly  redeemed  by  the  established  reality  of  the  actors 
and  the  raciness  of  the  narrative  which  comes  from  the  mouth 
of  Huck  Finn. 

The  Prince  and  the  Pauper  (1881),  a  first  venture  in  histori 
cal  romance,  was  deliberately  written  for  children  and  tested 
in  the  process  of  composition  on  the  author's  daughters.  The 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vn. 


16  Mark  Twain 

plot,  suggested  by  Charlotte  M.  Yonge's  The  Prince  and  the 
Page,  is  fascinating  to  the  youthful  imagination;  and  the  no 
tion  underlying  it  is  to  the  older  reader  the  most  characteristic 
element  in  the  book.  The  exchange  of  clothes  and  stations 
effected  by  Tom  Canty  and  Prince  Edward,  later  Edward  VI, 
provided  for  the  prince  opportunities  for  feeling  the  common  lot 
which  the  democratic  author  would  gladly  have  given  to  all  the 
monarchs  of  Europe.  Occasionally  writing  over  the  heads  of 
his  audience,  he  utilizes  the  situation  to  express  his  inveterate 
sense  of  the  evil  of  monarchical  institutions  and  in  particular 
his  peculiarly  flaming  indignation  at  obsolete  English  penal 
laws.  Humorous  situations,  sometimes  tragically  humorous, 
are  abundant ;  but  neither  in  the  simple  and  vigorous  prose  of 
the  narrative  nor  in  the  archaic  style  of  the  dialogue  does  one 
find  at  full  strength  the  idiom  and  the  first-hand  observation 
for  which  one  values  Tom  Sawyer.  The  Prince  and  the  Pauper 
is  a  distinguished  book  in  the  class  to  which  Little  Lord  Fauntle- 
roy  was  added  in  1886;  but  it  is  overshadowed  by  Mark  Twain's 
own  work. 

The  Adventures  of  Huckleberry  Finn  (1884)  overshadows  it; 
but  that  is  nothing.  Huckleberry  Finn  exceeds  even  Tom  Saw 
yer  almost  as  clearly  as  Tom  Sawyer  exceeds  The  Prince  and  the 
Pauper.  Mark  Twain  had  conceived  the  tale  in  1876  as  a 
sequel  to  the  story  of  Tom.  In  the  course  of  its  long  gestation 
he  had  revisited  the  Mississippi  Valley  and  had  published  his 
superb  commemoration  of  his  own  early  life  on  the  river.  He 
wrote  his  second  masterpiece  of  Mississippi  fiction  with  a  desire 
to  express  what  in  Tom  Sawyer  he  had  hardly  attempted,  what, 
indeed,  came  slowly  into  his  possession,  his  sense  of  the  half- 
barbaric  charm  and  the  romantic  possibilities  in  that  grey 
wilderness  of  moving  water  and  the  rough  men  who  trafficked 
on  it.  He  had  given  power  to  the  earlier  story  by  the  representa 
tion  of  characters  and  incidents  which  are  typical  of  the  whole 
of  American  boyhood  in  rural  communities  in  many  parts  of  the 
country.  He  gave  power  to  Huckleberry  Finn  by  a  selection  of 
unusual  characters  and  extraordinary  incidents  which  are 
inseparably  related  to  and  illustrative  of  their  special  environ 
ment.  He  shifted  heroes,  displacing  quick-witted,  imaginative 
Tom  by  the  village  drunkard's  son,  because  Huck  in  his  hard, 
nonchalant,  adventurous  adolescence  is  a  more  distinctive  pro- 


"A  Connecticut  Yankee"  17 

duct  of  the  frontier.  He  changed  the  narrator,  letting  Huck 
tell  his  own  story,  in  order  to  invest  the  entire  narrative  in  its 
native  garb  and  colour.  Huck  perhaps  exhibits  now  and  then 
a  little  more  humour  and  feeling  for  nature  than  a  picaro  is 
entitled  to  possess;  but  in  the  main  his  point  of  view  is  well 
maintained.  His  strange  captivity  in  his  father's  cabin,  the 
great  flight  down  the  river,  the  mysteries  of  fog  and  night  and 
current,  the  colloquy  on  King  Sollermun,  the  superbly  inci 
dental  narrative  of  the  Grangerford-Shepherdson  feud,  the 
appealing  devotion  and  affectionateness  of  Nigger  Jim,  Huck's 
case  of  conscience, — all  are  stamped  with  the  peculiar  comment 
of  Huck's  earthy,  callous,  but  not  insensitive  soul.  The  stuff 
and  manner  of  the  tale  are  unique,  and  it  is  as  imperishably 
substantial  as  Robinson  Crusoe,  whether  one  admire  it  with 
Andrew  Lang  as  "a  nearly  flawless  gem  of  romance  and  hu 
mour"  or  with  Professor  Matthews  as  "a  marvellously  accurate 
portrayal  of  a  whole  civilization." 

A  Connecticut  Yankee  at  the  Court  of  King  Arthur  (1889)  is 
a  work  of  humorous  invention  set  in  motion  by  G.  W.  Cable, 
who  first  brought  Malory's  Morte  <T  Arthur  to  Mark  Twain's 
attention.  For  assignable  reasons  it  has  not  had  the  universal 
admiration  enjoyed  by  Huckleberry  Finn;  Andrew  Lang,  for 
example,  could  not  bring  himself  to  read  it;  yet  one  might 
plausibly  argue  that  it  represents  Mark  Twain  more  completely 
than  any  other  single  book  on  his  list,  and  so  may  serve  as  a 
touchstone  to  distinguish  those  who  care  for  the  man  from  those 
who  only  care  for  some  of  his  stories.  It  displays  every  variety 
of  his  style  from  the  mock-heroic  and  shirt-sleeve  journalese  of 
the  Yankee's  familiar  vein  to  the  careful  euphonies  of  his  de 
scriptions  of  English  landscape  and  the  Dantean  mordancy 
of  the  chapter  "In  the  Queen's  Dungeons."  It  exhibits  his 
humour  in  moods  from  the  grimmest  to  the  gayest,  mingling 
scenes  of  pathos,  terror,  and  excruciating  cruelty  with  hilarious 
comic  inventions  and  adventures,  which  prove  their  validity  for 
the  imagination  by  abiding  in  the  memory :  the  sewing-machine 
worked  by  the  bowing  hermit,  the  mules  blushing  at  the  jokes 
of  the  pilgrims,  the  expedition  with  Alisande,  the  contests  with 
Merlin,  the  expedition  with  King  Arthur,  Launcelot  and  the 
bicycle  squad,  and  the  annihilation  of  the  chivalry  of  England. 
The  hero  is,  despite  the  title,  no  mere  Yankee  but  Mark  Twain's 


VOL.    Ill  —  2 


1 8  Mark  Twain 

"personal  representative" — acquainted  with  the  machine 
shops  of  New  Haven  but  acquainted  also  with  navigation  on  the 
Mississippi  and  with  Western  journalism  and  with  the  use  of 
the  lariat.  The  moment  that  he  enters  "the  holy  gloom"  of 
history  he  becomes,  as  Mark  Twain  became  when  he  went  to 
Europe,  the  representative  of  democratic  America,  preaching 
the  gospel  of  commonsense  and  practical  improvement  and 
liberty  and  equality  and  free  thought  inherited  from  Franklin, 
Paine,  Jefferson,  and  Ingersoll.  Those  to  whom  Malory's 
romance  is  a  sacred  book  may  fairly  complain  that  the  ex 
hibition  of  the  Arthurian  realm  is  a  brutal  and  libellous  travesty, 
attributing  to  the  legendary  period  of  Arthur  horrors  which 
belong  to  medieval  Spain  and  Italy.  Mark  Twain  admits  the 
charge.  He  takes  his  horrors  where  he  finds  them.  His  wide- 
sweeping  satirical  purpose  requires  a  comprehensive  display  of 
human  ignorance,  folly,  and  iniquity.  He  must  vent  the  flame 
of  indignation  which  swept  through  him  whenever  he  fixed  his 
attention  on  human  history — indignation  against  removable 
dirt,  ignorance,  injustice,  and  cruelty.  As  a  radical  American, 
he  ascribed  a  great  share  of  these  evils  to  monarchy,  aristocracy, 
and  an  established  church,  and  he  made  his  contemporary 
references  pointed  and  painful  to  English  sensibilities.  A 
Connecticut  Yankee  is  his  Don  Quixote,  a  sincere  book,  full  of 
lifelong  convictions  earnestly  held,  a  book  charged  with  a  rude 
iconoclastic  humour,  intended  like  the  work  of  Cervantes  to 
hasten  the  end  of  an  obsolescent  civilization.  Whether  it  will 
finally  be  judged  a  great  book  will  depend  in  considerable 
measure  on  factors  outside  itself,  particularly  on  the  prosperity 
of  western  democratic  sentiment  in  the  world  at  large.  Since 
the  War  of  the  German  Invasions  there  has  been  an  increase  of 
Quixotism  in  his  sense,  and  what  used  to  be  considered  his 
unnecessary  rage  at  windmills  now  looks  like  prophetic  tilting 
at  giants. 

The  volume  containing  Pudd'nhead  Wilson  and  Those 
Extraordinary  Twins,  published  in  1894,  one  is  predisposed  to 
value  because  it  is  another  specimen  from  the  Mississippi 
"lead."  It  adds,  however,  relatively  so  little  that  is  distinctive 
to  the  record  that  one  is  tempted  to  use  it  as  an  unsurpassable 
illustration  of  haphazard  method  in  composition.  The  pic 
ture  of  a  two-headed  freak  had  given  him  the  cue  for  a  "howl- 


"Joan  of  Arc75  19 

ing  farce."  When  he  began  to  write,  the  contemplated  short 
story  swiftly  expanded,  and  there  developed  unexpectedly  un 
der  his  hand  serious  characters  and  a  tragic  situation  unrelated 
to  the  initiating  impulse.  After  long  study  he  extracted  the 
"farce"  by  "Csesarean  operation,"  and  appended  it  with 
amusing  explanations  to  the  "tragedy"  which  it  had  set  in 
motion.  Pudd'nhead  Wilson,  disfigured  by  vestiges  of  the 
farce  in  the  incredible  Italian  twins,  is,  like  The  Gilded  Age,  a 
discordant  medley  with  powerful  character-drawing  in  Roxana 
and  her  half-breed  son,  and  with  a  somewhat  feebly  indicated 
novelty  in  the  philosophical  detective  Pudd'nhead. 

The  last  certified  claimant  for  a  position  in  the  front  rank 
of  the  novels  is  Joan  of  Arc  (1896),  a  romance  containing  as  its 
core  the  ascertained  facts  concerning  one  of  the  most  problem 
atic  figures  in  secular  history,  and  as  its  important  imaginative 
expansion  Mark  Twain's  conception  of  her  familiar  charm  and 
his  pictures  of  the  battles  and  scenes  of  state  and  trials  through 
which  she  passed.  As  in  the  somewhat  similar  case  of  the 
supernatural  powers  of  Jesus,  of  which  he  was  certainly  scepti 
cal,  he  says  nothing  to  raise  a  doubt  of  the  Maid's  divine  assist 
ance;  he  neither  explained  nor  attempted  to  explain  away 
Joan's  mystery.  Her  character,  her  Voices,  and  her  mission  he 
presents  throughout  with  an  air  of  absolute  reverence  and 
indeed  at  times  with  almost  breathless  adoration.  For  the 
reader  in  whom  illusion  is  not  destroyed  by  constant  involun 
tary  attention  to  the  line  where  fact  meets  fiction  the  total 
impression  is  doubtless  both  beautiful  and  deeply  moving.  In 
the  last  section,  at  least,  which  deals  with  the  trial  and  martyr 
dom,  the  most  impatient  reader  of  historical  romance  can 
hardly  escape  the  pang  of  actuality;  he  is  too  near  the  facts. 
Recognizing  that  the  book  was  quite  out  of  his  customary 
vein,  Mark  Twain  published  it  first  anonymously;  yet  in  1908 
he  wrote :  "  I  like  the  Joan  of  Arc  best  of  all  my  books  and  it  is 
the  best ;  I  know  it  perfectly  well.  And  besides,  it  furnished  me 
seven  times  the  pleasure  afforded  me  by  any  of  the  others; 
12  years  of  preparation  &  2  years  of  writing.  The  others 
needed  no  preparation,  &  got  none."  This  much  we  must 
admit:  we  are  glad  to  have  Joan  of  Arc  on  the  shelf  beside  A 
Connecticut  Yankee  to  complete  our  conception  of  that  versa 
tile  and  representative  American  whom  we  call  Mark  Twain. 


20  Mark  Twain 

;  Without  it,  and  its  little  companion -piece,  In  Defence  of  Harriet 
Shelley  (1894),  we  should  have  a  harder  task  to  prove,  against 
those  that  take  him  for  a  hard  unsanctified  philistine,  his  invin 
cible  chivalry  and  fineness  in  relation  to  womankind,  feelings 
precious  in  a  free  society,  and  fostered,  as  we  like  to  think,  by 
a  thoroughly  established  American  tradition. 

But  if  we  value  a  book  in  proportion  to  its  saturation  with 
its  author's  most  distinctive  qualities  and  in  proportion  to  its 
power,  exerted  or  latent,  to  affect  the  general  literary  current, 
we  shall  hardly  rate  Joan  of  Arc  among  Mark  Twain's  most 
interesting  or  significant  books.  In  its  utterly  reverent  treat 
ment  of  the  traditional  and  the  supernatural  it  impresses  one 
as  a  counterpoise  obviously  unequal  to  the  task  of  making  a 
balance  with  the  great  burden  of  naturalistic  and  radically 
iconoclastic  writing  in  the  other  scale. 

Mark  Twain  counts  as  an  influence  because  he  is  an  innova 
tor.  The  great  notes  of  his  innovation  from  Innocents  Abroad 
to  A  Connecticut  Yankee  are :  first,  the  disillusioned  treatment 
of  history;  second,  the  fearless  exploitation  of  "the  natural 
man,"  or,  the  next  thing  to  it,  "the  free-born  American"; 
and,  lastly,  a  certain  strain  of  naturalistic  pessimism.  In  the 
first  class  go  the  foreign -travel  books,  The  Prince  and  the 
Pauper,  and  A  Connecticut  Yankee;  and  the  impulse  properly 
proceeding  from  them  is  imaginative  satire.  In  the  second 
class  go  Roughing  It,  Tom  Sawyer,  Life  on  the  Mississippi, 
Huckleberry  Finn,  Adam's  Diary,  and  Eve's  Diary;  and  from 
such  work  has  proceeded  an  observable  impulse  to  the  cultiva 
tion  of  the  indigenous,  the  elemental,  the  primitive,  and,  per 
haps,  the  brutal  and  the  sensual.  For  the  third  class  one  can 
glean  representative  paragraphs  only  here  and  there  among  the 
writings  published  in  Mark  Twain's  lifetime;  but  the  posthu 
mously  published  philosophical  dialogue  What  is  Man?  (1905) 
and  The  Mysterious  Stranger  (1916),  a  romance,  and  some  of 
the  letters  are  steeped  in  a  naturalistic  melancholy  and  tinged 
with  a  philosophical  bitterness  of  which  American  literature 
before  Mark  Twain  showed  hardly  a  trace.  That  strain  seems 
likely  to  be  influential  too,  and,  unfortunately,  not  always  in 
connection  with  the  fine  bravado  of  his  American  faith,  which 
occasionally  required  an  antidote  to  its  natural  insolence. 


CHAPTER  IX 

Minor   Humorists 

THE  eccentric  and  racy  touch  of  the  Civil  War  humorists x 
vanished  early  in  the  seventies,  and  humour  underwent 
a  period  of  organization,  levelling,  and  standardization. 
Its  cruder  manifestations  disappeared;  editors  no  longer  burst 
upon  their  readers  with  the  discovery  of  unsuspected  females 
— Ann  Tiquity,  Ann  Gelic,  and  Ann  O'Dyne — in  Webster's 
Unabridged;  parodying  became  less  inevitable;  and  " reverses" 
such  as  P.  T.  Barnum's 

Lewd  did  I  live  &  evil  I  did  dwel 

lost  their  fascination  for  keen  minds.  The  dialect  of  the  immi 
grant  replaced  the  twang  of  the  crossroads.  And  at  the  same 
time  the  native  flavour  and  homely  philosophy  of  the  older 
humour  ceased  to  illuminate  the  work  of  the  fun-makers. 

The  channels  of  humorous  journalism  were  meanwhile 
clearly  marked  out.  Casual  newspaper  paragraphers  like  J.  M. 
Bailey  of  The  Danbury  [Connecticut]  News,  C.  B.  Lewis  of  The 
Detroit  Free  Press,  and  R.  J.  Burdette  of  The  Burlington  [Iowa] 
Hawkey e  gave  their  otherwise  obscure  journals  a  nation-wide 
prominence,  and  demonstrated  the  commercial  value  of  daily 
humour.  Their  books,  compiled  from  newspaper  clippings, 
have,  however,  long  been  covered  by  les  neiges  d'antan.  Eugene 
Field  set  the  measure  of  the  humorist's  output  at  one  column 
a  day  "leaded  agate,  first  line  brevier."  He  aspired  also  to 
produce  work  of  permanent  literary  quality.  His  standards  in 
both  respects  are  kept  up  at  the  present  time  by  such  expe 
rienced  "colyumists"  as  Bert  Leston  Taylor  ("B.  L.  T.'")  of 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xix. 

21 


22  Minor  Humorists 

The  Chicago  Tribune  and  in  New  York  by  Franklin  P.  Adams 
("F.  P.  A.")  of  The  Tribune  and  Don  Marquis  of  The  Even 
ing  Sun.  The  column  that  soothes  tired  business  men  on 
train,  subway,  or  trolley  has  long  been  supplemented  for  family, 
club,  and  barber-shop  consumption  by  the  humorous  weeklies: 
Puck,  founded  in  1877;  Judge,  1881;  and  most  notably  Life, 
1883.  Taking  their  cue  rather  from  the  best  of  the  college 
funny  papers,  such  as  The  Harvard  Lampoon,  founded  1876, 
than  from  Punch,  these  weekly  magazines  have  supplied  the 
public  with  its  best  periodical  humour.  H.  C.  Bunner, J  one 
time  editor  of  Puck,  and  John  Ames  Mitchell  and  Edward  S. 
Martin,  founders  of  Life,  should  be  mentioned  among  the  writers 
who  have  given  a  high  tone  to  comic  journalism. 

Besides  its  submission  to  the  great  American  genius  for 
commercialization,  whatever  national  quality  may  be  found  in 
the  humour  of  the  last  half  century  consists  mainly  in  a  ten 
dency  to  regard  fun-making  as  an  end  in  itself  rather  than  as  an 
agent  to  criticism.  Though  no  longer  relying  on  the  mechanical 
misspellings  of  Artemus  Ward  or  Josh  Billings,  the  next  crop  of 
humorists  wrought  effects  in  dialect  rather  than  in  character 
and  preferred  absurdities  of  their  own  invention  to  incongruities 
observed  in  the  social  scheme.  Irony  was  alien  to  their  minds, 
and  satire,  when  they  used  it,  took  for  its  victims  Mormons, 
mothers-in-law,  undertakers,  and  other  beings  whose  removal 
would  in  no  way  imperil  the  pillars  of  society.  Jesters  made  it 
their  function  to  tickle  the  sides  of  a  nation  content  and  prosper 
ous,  conscious  of  having  made  in  the  Civil  War  the  great  sacri 
fice  of  a  generation,  and  confident  after  Grant's  election  that 
the  fruits  of  victory  would  be  apportioned  among  the  truly  de 
serving.  There  may  be  significance  in  the  fact  that  the  two 
comic  writers  who  deserted  journalism  for  other  professions 
became  one  a  popular  preacher  the  other  a  successful  manu 
facturer  and  conspicuous  advocate  of  high  tariff.  At  any  rate, 
the  words  prefixed  to  one  of  the  most  widely  circulated  humor 
ous  books  of  the  time  might  well  have  served  as  a  motto  for 
them  all:  "Fun  is  the  most  conservative  element  of  society, 
and  it  ought  to  be  cherished  and  encouraged  by  all  lawful 
means."2 

1  See  also  Book  II,  Chap,  xxm,  and  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 

2  "  Max  Adeler, "  Out  of  the  Hurly- Burly,  1874,  p.  6. 


Leland  23 

Such  being  the  case,  the  typical  work  of  such  humorists 
cannot  stand  high  in  comparison  with  the  subtler  manifesta 
tions  of  the  Comic  Spirit.  That,  at  least,  would  be  the  con 
clusion  if  American  humour  were  regarded  as  a  mere  stage  in  an 
inevitable  progress  from  pioneer  jocularity  to  urbane  irony. 
But  it  is  possible  that  the  national  preference  for  unreflective 
merriment  is  not  thoughtless  and  immature,  but  deliberate, 
permanent,  and  full  grown.  While  Americans  can  picture 
Lincoln  deferring  discussion  of  the  Emancipation  Proclama 
tion  to  read  aloud  a  chapter  from  Artemus  Ward,  the  laughter 
of  sheer  full-throated  relief  may  well  seem  to  them  more  manly 
than  the  comedy  that  wakens  thoughtful  laughter.  American 
humour,  then,  may  claim  to  be  of  a  different  school  from  the 
comedy  of  the  Old  World,  operating  on  human  nature  by 
the  lenitives  and  tonics  of  mirth  instead  of  by  the  scalpel  of 
criticism. 

One  of  the  most  decided  believers  in  recreative  humour  was 
a  man  of  many  interests  whose  humorous  writing  was  origi 
nally  done  merely  for  his  own  amusement.  Charles  Godfrey 
Leland  (1824-1903),  a  native  of  Philadelphia  and  a  graduate  of 
Princeton,  after  three  years  of  student  life  at  Heidelberg  and 
Munich  and  three  days  as  captain  of  a  barricade  in  the  Paris 
revolution  of  1848,  found  the  practice  of  law  in  the  city  of  his 
birth  a  listless  occupation.  Turning  journalist,  he  worked 
successively  as  managing  editor  under  P.  T.  Barnum  and  R.  W. 
Griswold.  He  gave  early  and  able  support  to  Lincoln's  ad 
ministration,  besides  seeing  service  in  an  emergency  regiment 
during  the  Gettysburg  campaign.  The  later  years  of  his  long 
life  were  spent  in  cultivating  a  wide  circle  of  friends  in  America 
and  Europe,  in  a  disinterested  and  successful  effort  to  establish 
industrial  art  as  a  branch  of  public  education,  and  in  the  study 
of  gipsy  lore,  tinkers'  language,  Indian  legends,  Italian  witches, 
and  all  things  exotic,  mysterious,  and  occult.  During  this  time 
he  wrote  with  extreme  fluency  more  than  fifty  books  on  the 
most  varied  subjects,  not  to  mention  uncounted  contributions 
to  periodicals.  He  would  doubtless  have  wished  to  be  re 
membered  chiefly  for  his  services  to  education. 

His  generation,  however,  persisted  in  thinking  of  him  ex 
clusively  as  the  author  of  Hans  Breitmann's  Ballads,  often  to 
his  annoyance  identifying  him  with  the  hero  of  his  lays.  Indis- 


24  Minor  Humorists 

tinguishable  Leland  and  Breitmann  are  only  in  certain  ballads 
describing  European  cities  with  quiet  sentimental  charm.  But 
the  huge,  bearded  Hans  Breitmann  who  gorges,  guzzles,  and 
scuffles  at  the  famous  "barty, "  drinks  lager  from  his  boots 
among  the  rebel  dead,  and  cynically  takes  advantage  of  the 
' '  circumswindles  "  of  American  politics,  is  of  course  not  a  pro 
jection  of  the  author's  personality  but  "a  German  gentleman 
who  drinks,  fights,  and  plunders."  In  this  conception  Leland 
discovered  a  vein  of  genuine  humour,  the  converse  of  that  in 
Innocents  Abroad. J  Mark  Twain's  double-edged  satire  disclosed 
the  imperviousness  of  the  native  American  to  the  finer  subtle 
ties  and  superfluities  of  European  culture.  Leland  revealed 
the  demoralization  of  an  over-complex  European  in  the  rarefied 
social  atmosphere  of  the  New  World.  Released  from  accus 
tomed  exterior  control  and  given  nothing  for  his  native  ideal 
isms  to  work  on,  "der  Breitmann  solfe  de  infinide  ash  von 
eternal  shpree."2 

As  a  cavalry  commander  and  ' '  bummer ' '  in  the  Civil  War 
this  compound  of  geist  and  thirst  finds  his  real  vocation.  Breit 
mann  in  Maryland,  describing,  with  a  ringing  "gling,  glang, 
gloria!"  refrain,  the  wild  ride  of  German  troopers  to  capture  a 
rebel  tavern,  catches  the  fire  and  swiftness  of  an  echtdeutsch 
ballad.  A  more  unusual  blend  of  moods — satire,  sentiment, 
excitement,  pathos — may  be  found  in  Breitmann 's  Going  to 
Church.  In  later  ballads  Breitmann  enters  the  Franco-Prus 
sian  War,  but  in  proportion  as  he  becomes  an  Uhlan  "mad  with 
durst  for  bier  and  blut"  he  loses  significance  as  an  American 
figure.  The  fun  tends  to  be  kept  up  by  mechanical  expedients, 
as  in  the  ballad  of  Breitmann  in  a  Balloon. 

Decidedly  more  amusing  are  the  burlesques  of  Teutonic 
legends,  such  as  the  celebrated  De  Maiden  mid  Nodings  on. 
These  have  nothing  of  the  real  Breitmann  about  them  but  the 
German -American  dialect.  Some  clever  macaronics  in  many 
tongues  further  indicate  that  German-English  was  not  the 
only  jargon  at  Leland 's  command.  Part  of  his  reputation  as 
being  ' '  at  the  very  head  of  Pidgin  English  learning  and  litera 
ture  ' '  was  earned  by  his  publication  of  songs  and  stories  in  the 
China-English  dialect,  by  his  discovery  of  the  last  refinement 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vm. 

1 1.  e.  "Breitmann  solves  the  Infinite  as  one  eternal  spree." 


Leland  25 

in  vagabond  lore,  a  tinkers'  language  called  Shelta,  and  by  his 
vast  collection  of  curious  mixtures  of  speech  from  all  parts  of 
the  world.  Much  of  his  folklore  study  brought  into  play  his 
keen  sense  of  drollery.  But  in  spite  of  his  Egyptian  Sketch- 
Book,  his  Brand-New  Ballads,  and  the  sly  meditations  of  his 
Flaxius,  Leland  may  fairly  be  considered  a  humorist  of  only 
one  character.  Hans  Breitmann,  created  by  accident  to  fill  a 
space  in  Graham's  Magazine  in  1856  and  revived  for  the  last 
time  in  a  prose  and  verse  sketch-book  of  the  Tyrol  in  1895,  re 
mains  the  outstanding  representative  of  his  genius. 

Opportunities  for  humorous  studies  of  more  varied  kinds 
existed  in  plenty  in  Leland 's  career,  had  he  cared  to  make  use 
of  them.  One  can  hardly  open  his  entertaining  Memoirs  with 
out  stumbling  upon  hints  that  would  have  provided  twenty 
lesser  men  with  sufficient  stock  in  trade.  A  single  incident  from 
the  Gettysburg  campaign  must  suffice  for  illustration : 

There  came  shambling  to  me  an  odd  figure.  There  had  been 
some  slight  attempt  by  him  to  look  like  a  soldier — he  had  a  feather 
in  his  hat — but  he  carried  his  rifle  as  if  after  deer  or  racoons,  and 
as  if  he  were  used  to  it.  "Say,  Cap!"  he  exclaimed,  "kin  you  tell 
me  where  a  chap  could  get  some  ammynition?"  "Go  to  your 
quartermaster, "  I  replied.  "  Ain't  got  no  quartermaster. "  "  Well 
then  to  your  commanding  officer — to  your  regiment. "  "Ain't  got 
no  commanding  officer  nowher  this  side  o'  God,  nor  no  regiment. 
...  I'll  jest  tell  you,  Cap,  how  it  is.  I  live  in  the  south  line  of 
New  York  State,  and  when  I  heard  that  the  rebs  had  got  inter 
Pennsylvany,  forty  of  us  held  a  meetin'  and  'pinted  me  Cap'n. 
So  we  came  down  here  cross  country,  and  'rived  this  a'ternoon,  and 
findin'  fightin'  goin'  on,  went  straight  for  the  bush.  And  gettin' 
cover,  we  shot  the  darndest  sight  of  rebels  you  ever  did  see.  And 
now  all  our  ammynition  is  expended,  I've  come  to  town  for  more, 
for  there's  some  of  'em  still  left — who  want  killin'  badly."  x 

Had  this  unique  bushwhacker  but  grown  in  Leland 's  imagi 
nation  as  did  Jost  of  the  Pennsylvania  cavalry,  the  original  of 
Hans  Breitmann  in  his  military  phase,  we  might  have  pos 
sessed  a  character  more  truly  American  and  not  less  rich  in 
humorous  significance.  But  Leland  was  not  merely  a  hu 
morist,  and  to  deplore  the  loss  of  what  he  left  undone  is  at  once 

1  C.  G.  Leland,  Memoirs,  vol.  i.,  pp.  51-52. 


26  Minor  Humorists 

to  be  ungrateful  for  his  many  services  in  other  fields  and  to 
express  the  highest  appreciation  of  what  he  contributed  to  in 
ternational  comedy. 

Of  the  deluge  of  humorists  who  followed,  Charles  Heber 
Clark  ("Max  Adeler"),  like  Leland,  became  better  known  in 
England  than  in  the  United  States.  Out  of  the  Hurly-Burly 
(1874),  his  first  and  best  book,  links  together  facetious  extrava 
gances  in  prose  and  verse  on  a  thread  of  narrative  describing 
the  perplexities  of  the  suburbanite.  Its  delightful  illustrations 
by  A.  B.  Frost  contributed  almost  as  much  as  the  text  to  the 
popularity  of  the  book.  Clark's  travesties  of  the  obituary  lyric 
have  been  long  remembered.  At  times  rivalling  the  mock 
horrors  of  the  Bab  Ballads,  his  mortuary  burlesques  go  far  to 
justify  Augustine  Birrell's  dictum  that  the  essence  of  American 
humour  consists  in  speaking  lightly  of  dreadful  subjects. 

In  spite  of  his  pseudonym  Clark  was  not  one  of  the  many 
dialect  writers.  The  verbal  humours  of  German-American 
speech  were  further  exhibited,  however,  in  the  Yawcob  Strauss 
rhymes  of  Charles  Pollen  Adams.  Negro  dialect  and  certain 
broad  aspects  of  darky  pretentiousness  were  turned  to  laugh 
able  effect  by  Charles  Bertrand  Lewis  ("M.  Quad")  in  The 
Lime-Kiln  Club  (1887)  and  other  sketches.  At  the  close  of  the 
century  Bowery  slang  gained  a  temporary  currency  through 
the  Chimmie  Fadden  stories  of  Edward  Waterman  Townsend, 
but  Faddenism  never  seriously  disturbed  the  cult  of  Mr. 
Dooley,  whose  Irish-American  witticisms  deserve  more  ex 
tended  mention.  A  remarkable  type  of  later  slang,  that  in 
vented  by  an  author  and  yet  perfectly  intelligible  to  all  alert 
Americans,  reached  its  apogee  in  the  work  of  George  Ade, 
whose  Fables  in  Slang  (1900)  have  been  followed  by  several 
volumes  of  a  similar  method. 

Humorists  who  did  not  rely  upon  dialect  for  their  main 
effect  usually  began  on  the  humour  of  a  particular  locality  and 
gradually  extended  their  range.  Miss  Marietta  Holley  as 
"Josiah  Allen's  Wife"  from  up-state  New  York  has  for  more 
than  forty  years  applied  shrewd  observation  and  the  homeliest 
common  sense  to  the  popular  amusements  and  fashionable 
problems  of  the  day.  My  Opinions  and  Betsy  Bobbett's  (1873) 
and  Samantha  at  Saratoga  (1887)  established  her  reputation  as 
a  keen  deviser  of  ludicrous  incidents  and  impossible  social  blun- 


Newspaper  Comedians  27 

ders.  James  Montgomery  Bailey  ('  *  The  D anbury  News  Man ' ' ) 
and  Robert  Jones  Burdette  ("The  Hawkeye  Man")  attained  a 
more  than  local  vogue  as  newspaper  comedians,  Bailey  excelling 
in  quaintly  exaggerated  pictures  of  familiar  domestic  occur 
rences,  Burdette  in  the  unexpected  collocation  of  dissimilar 
ideas.  Edgar  Wilson  Nye  ("Bill  Nye"),  once  of  TheLaramie 
[Wyoming]  Boomerang,  was  also  fond  of  surprising  turns  of 
phrase,  but  his  most  characteristic  vein  lay  in  a  sort  of  affected, 
zealous  idiocy.  No  better  example  of  his  manner  is  available 
than  one  already  selected  by  a  skilled  hand : 

The  condition  of  our  navy  need  not  give  rise  to  any  serious  ap 
prehension.  The  yard  in  which  it  is  placed  at  Brooklyn  is  en 
closed  by  a  high  brick  wall  affording  it  ample  protection.  A  man 
on  board  the  Atlanta  at  anchor  at  Brooklyn  is  quite  as  safe  as  he 
would  be  at  home .  The  guns  on  board  the  A  tlanta  are  breechloaders ; 
this  is  a  great  improvement  on  the  old-style  gun,  because  in  former 
times  in  case  of  a  naval  combat  the  man  who  went  outside  the 
ship  to  load  the  gun  while  it  was  raining  frequently  contracted 
pneumonia.1 

The  lecture  platform  gave  both  Nye  and  Burdette  an  oppor 
tunity  to  display  at  best  advantage  their  comical  solemnity, 
and  much  of  their  notoriety  rose  from  their  public  appearances. 
Nye  especially  was  fortunate  in  his  collaborators,  touring  at 
one  time  with  Mark  Twain  and  again  with  James  Whitcomb 
Riley2  and  Eugene  Field. 

The  last  named,  greatest  of  newspaper  paragraphers  and  in 
his  own  right  something  more,  qualified  as  a  Middle  Westerner 
by  his  birth  in  St.  Louis  (1850)  and  by  his  New  England  an 
cestry  and  bringing  up.  After  three  years  in  three  colleges,  a 
trip  to  Europe,  and  an  early  marriage,  he  served  his  apprentice 
ship  to  journalism  on  several  Missouri  papers.  From  The 
Denver  [Colorado]  Tribune  his  first  humorous  skit,  The  Tribune 
Primer  (1882),  was  reprinted.  The  best  years  of  his  life  were 
spent  in  Chicago  as  contributing  editor  to  The  Chicago  Record. 
In  his  daily  column  of  "Sharps  and  Flats"  appeared  his  most 
characteristic  verse,3  tales,  and  miscellaneous  paragraphs,  later 

1  Quoted  by  S.  Leacock,  American  Humour,  Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  Ixxvi,  p. 

453- 

3  See  Book  III,  Chap.  x.  3  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xxm. 


28  Minor  Humorists 

collected  to  form  A  Little  Book  of  Western  Verse  (1889),  A 
Little  Book  of  Profitable  Tales  (1889),  and  other  volumes.  He 
was  still  in  the  prime  of  life  and  at  the  height  of  his  celebrity  as 
a  household  poet,  humorist,  and  lecturer,  when  he  wrote  in  the 
assumed  character  of  a  veteran  bibliomaniac : ' '  I  am  aweary  and 
will  rest  a  little  while;  lie  thou  there,  my  pen,  for  a  dream — a 
pleasant  dream — calleth  me  away."  A  few  weeks  later  (4 
November,  1895)  death  visited  the  writer  as  he  slept. 

Field's  best  known  pieces  of  verse  and  prose  exploiting 
sentimental  and  pathetic  themes,  especially  Christmas  festivi 
ties  and  the  deaths  of  little  children,  emerge  from  a  background 
of  humorous  writing  illustrated  by  the  rank  and  file  of  his  con 
tributions  to  ''Sharps  and  Flats."  The  waggery  of  his  natural 
bent  finds  unmixed  expression  in  the  early  and  unsuccessful 
book,  Culture's  Garland;  Being  Memoranda  of  the  Gradual  Rise  of 
Literature,  Art,  Music  and  Society  in  Chicago  and  other  Western 
Ganglia  (1887),  which  engagingly  blends  the  atmosphere  of 
cultivation,  so  long  anticipated  by  Chicagoans,  with  whiffs 
from  the  very  real  and  ever-present  stockyards.  Only  a  few 
gleams  of  wit,  however,  relieve  the  profitable  sentimentality  of 
the  later  Tales. 

A  better  balanced  expression  of  his  undeniable  personal 
charm  is  to  be  found  in  A  Little  Book  of  Western  Verse,  virile 
and  funny  in  the  ballads  of  the  miners'  camp  on  Red  Hoss 
Mountain; otherwise  "Western"  only  as  it  exemplifies  a  readi 
ness  to  try  anything  once.1  Among  many  lullabies,  Christ 
mas  hymns,  and  lyrics  of  infant  mortality,  the  playful  side  of 
Field's  genius  is  sufficiently  represented  by  imitations  of  Old 
English  ballads,  echoes  of  Horatian  themes,  a  few  rollicking 
nursery  songs,  and  much  personal,  political,  and  literary  gossip 
cleverly  versified.  A  bit  of  flippancy  like  The  Little  Peach  of 
Emerald  Hue  goes  to  show  that  Field's  humour  could  on  occa 
sion  conquer  the  sentimental  strain  in  him.  But  only  too  often 
his  children  die  from  the  fatal  effects  of  contact  with  the  angels. 

In  his  more  ambitious  pieces  Field  not  infrequently  falls 
into  an  over-refinement  and  false  simplicity  of  style.  When  not 
too  consciously  doing  his  best,  however,  nothing  could  seem 

1  "  I  want  to  dip  around  in  all  sorts  of  versification,  simply  to  show  people  that 
determination  and  perseverance  can  accomplish  much  in  this  direction."  S. 
Thompson,  Eugene  Field,  vol.  ii.,  p.  120. 


Eugene  Field  29 

more  effortless  than  the  easy  play  of  his  wit.  One  thrust  at  a 
gang  of  politicians  junketing  at  their  constituents'  expense 
deserves  to  be  recalled  as  a  fair  example  of  his  skill : 

BLUE  CUT,  TENN.,  May  2,  1885.— The  second  section  of  the 
train  bearing  the  Illinois  Legislature  to  New  Orleans  was  stopped 
near  this  station  by  bandits  last  night.  After  relieving  the  bandits 
of  their  watches  and  money,  the  excursionists  proceeded  on  their 
journey  with  increased  enthusiasm.1 

Political  sarcasms  like  the  foregoing,  though  frequently 
employed,  have  ordinarily  been  powerless  to  influence  either 
the  character  of  American  politics  or  the  fortunes  of  any  par 
ticular  politician.  On  the  contrary,  they  have  had,  like  Ford 
jokes,  a  certain  advertising  value,  being  considered  less  marks 
of  discontent  than  the  banter  of  satisfaction  with  which  healthy 
Americans  accompany  their  doings.  Most  unusual,  therefore, 
is  the  spectacle  of  the  national  frame  of  mind  changed  in 
consequence  of  the  work  of  a  humorist.  Yet  that  result  may 
fairly  be  claimed  for  the  "Dooleys"  written  by  Finley  Peter 
Dunne  during  the  Spanish-American  War.  The  American 
public,  conscious  of  a  chivalrous  mission  in  the  war,  uncertain 
of  the  strength  of  the  adversary,  and  angry  at  the  bustling  in 
competence  and  greedy  profiteering  at  home,  lost  its  sense  of 
humour.  Its  regeneration  from  the  slough  of  perfervid  earnest 
ness  was  accelerated  by  the  cool  remarks  of  the  Irish  saloon 
keeper  of  Archey  Road,  Chicago.  As  Mr.  Dooley  commented 
on  the  great  charge  of  the  army  mules  at  Tampa  with  reflec 
tions  on  other  jackasses,  pictured  the  Cuban  towns  captured  by 
war-correspondents  and  the  Spanish  fleet  sunk  by  dispatch 
boats,  celebrated  General  Miles's  uniform  and  the  pugnacity  of 
"Cousin  George  Dooley"  (Admiral  Dewey),  the  national  fever 
cooled,  and  the  nation,  realizing  its  superfluous  power,  burst 
into  saving  laughter. 

"We're  a  gr-reat  people,"  said  Mr.  Hennessy,  earnestly. 
"We  ar-re,"  said   Mr.    Dooley.     "We   ar-re   that.     An'  th' 
best  iv  it  is,  we  know  we  ar-re." 

Mr.  Dooley  for  some  years  continued  to  give  his  opinions 
on  the  men  and  affairs  of  peace  with  a  shrewdness  that  recalls 

1  S.  Thompson,  Eugene  Field,  vol.  ii.,  p.  204. 


30  Minor  Humorists 

the  pungent  insight  of  Josh  Billings  and  makes  him  one  of  the 
most  quotable  writers.  Americans  of  the  present  generation 
are  not  likely  to  forget  some  of  his  sayings,  least  of  all  the  re 
mark  of  Father  Kelly : 

"Hogan,"  he  says,  "I'll  go  into  th'  battle  with  a  prayer  book  in 
wan  hand  an'  a  soord  in  th'  other,"  he  says;  "  an'  if  th'  wurruk  calls 
f'r  two  hands,  'tis  not  th'  soord  I'll  dhrop,"  he  says. 

When  not  busied  with  comments  on  current  events,  Mr. 
Dooley  sometimes  had  leisure  to  relate  incidents  of  the  life 
about  him  in  the  gas-house  district.  As  an  interpreter  of  the 
city,  however,  he  yields  to  Sydney  Porter  ("O.  Henry").1 
The  O.  Henry  story  is  the  last  word  in  deft  manipulation,  but  as 
a  humorist  Porter  is  not  deeply  philosophical.  His  neat  situa 
tions,  surprising  turns,  and  verbal  cleverness  show  a  refinement 
upon  the  methods  of  predecessors,  indeed,  but  not  a  new  comic 
attitude.  Unsurpassed  in  daring  extravaganza  when  he  can 
give  himself  completely  to  gaiety,  he  becomes  immediately 
sober  in  the  presence  of  thought  or  sentiment.  In  these  re 
spects  he  represents  the  norm  of  recent  American  humour  at  a 
high  pitch  of  technical  perfection,  and  his  death  in  1910  may 
fittingly  be  taken  as  the  close  of  the  period.  Just  at  present, 
judicious  Americans  are  importing  their  best  current  humour 
from  Canada. 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 


CHAPTER  X 

Later   Poets 

IN  the  expanding,  heterogeneous  America  of  the  second  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  poetry  lost  its  clearly  defined 
tendencies  and  became  various  and  experimental.  It  did 
not  cease  to  be  provincial ;  for  although  no  one  region  dominated 
as  New  England  had  dominated  in  the  first  half  of  the  century, 
the  provincial  accent  was  as  unmistakable,  and  the  purely 
national  accent  as  rare,  as  before.  The  East,  rapidly  becoming 
the  so-called  "effete  East,"  produced  a  poetry  to  which  the 
West  was  indifferent;  the  West,  still  the  West  of  "carnivorous 
animals  of  a  superior  rank,"  produced  a  poetry  that  the  culti 
vated  classes  of  the  East  regarded  as  vulgar.  In  a  broad  way  it 
may  perhaps  be  said  that  the  poetry  of  this  period  was  dedicated 
either  to  beauty  or  to  '  'life  " ;  to  a  revered  past,  or  to  the  present 
and  the  future ;  to  the  civilization  of  Asia  and  Europe,  or  to  the 
ideals  and  manners  of  America,  at  least  the  West  of  America. 
The  virtue  of  the  poetry  of  beauty  was  its  fidelity  to  a  noble 
tradition,  its  repetition,  with  a  difference,  of  familiar  and  justly 
approved  types  of  beauty;  its  defect  was  mechanical  repetition, 
petty  embellishment.  The  virtue  of  the  poetry  of  "life"  was 
fidelity  to  experience,  vitality  of  utterance;  its  defect,  crudity, 
meanness,  insensitiveness  to  fineness  of  feeling  and  beauty  of 
expression.  Where  the  poets  are  many  and  all  are  minor  it  is 
difficult  to  make  a  choice,  but  on  the  whole  it  seems  that  the 
outstanding  poets  of  the  East  were  Emily  Dickinson,  Aldrich, 
Bayard  Taylor,  R.  H.  Stoddard,  Stedman,  Gilder,  and  Hovey; 
and  of  the  West,  Bret  Harte,  Joaquin  Miller,  Sill,  Riley,  and 
Moody. x 

None  of  these  has  gained  more  with  time  than  has  Emily 
1  For  the  South,  see  Book  III,  Chap.  iv. 

31 


32  Later  Poets 

Dickinson.  Despite  her  defective  sense  of  form,  which  makes 
her  a  better  New  Englander  than  Easterner,  she  has  acquired  a 
permanent  following  of  discriminating  readers  through  her 
extraordinary  insight  into  the  life  of  the  mind  and  the  soul. 
This  insight  is  that  of  a  latter-day  Puritan,  completely  divorced 
from  the  outward  stir  of  life,  retiring,  by  preference,  deeper  and 
deeper  within.  Born  in  1830  at  Amherst,  Massachusetts,  she 
lived  there  all  her  life,  and  in  1886  died  there.  The  inwardness 
and  moral  ruggedness  of  Puritanism  she  inherited  mainly 
through  her  father,  Edward  Dickinson,  lawyer  and  treasurer  of 
Amherst  College,  a  Puritan  of  the  old  type,  whose  heart,  accord 
ing  to  his  daughter,  was  * '  pure  and  terrible. ' '  Her  affection  for 
him  was  so  largely  compounded  with  awe  that  in  a  sense  they 
were  strangers.  ' '  I  have  a  brother  and  sister, ' '  she  wrote  to  her 
poetical  preceptor,  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson1;  "my 
mother  does  not  care  for  thought,  and  father,  too  busy  with  his 
briefs  to  notice  what  we  do.  He  buys  me  many  books,  but 
begs  me  not  to  read  them,  because  he  fears  they  jiggle  the  mind. 
They  are  religious,  except  me. "  Of  course,  she  too  was  religious , 
and  intensely  so,  breathing  as  she  did  the  intoxicating  air  of 
Transcendentalism.  In  person  she  described  herself  as  "small, 
like  the  wren;  and  my  hair  is  bold  like  the  chestnut  burr;  and 
my  eyes,  like  the  sherry  in  the  glass  that  the  guest  leaves." 
"You  ask  of  my  companions.  Hills,  sir,  and  the  sundown,  and 
a  dog  large  as  myself. ' '  These,  and  not  her  family,  were  actually 
her  companions,  together  with  a  few  books  and  her  own  soul. 
She  had  an  alert  introspection  that  brought  her  more  than  the 
wealth  of  the  Indies.  There  is  no  better  example  of  the  New 
England  tendency  to  moral  revery  than  this  last  pale  Indian- 
summer  flower  of  Puritanism.  She  is  said  literally  to  have 
spent  years  without  passing  the  doorstep,  and  many  more 
years  without  leaving  her  father's  grounds.  After  the  death 
of  her  parents,  not  to  mention  her  dog  Carlo,  she  retired 
still  further  within  herself,  till  the  sounds  of  the  everyday 
world  must  have  come  to  her  as  from  a  previous  state  of 
existence. 

"I  find  ecstacy  in  living,"  she  said  to  Higginson,  and  spoke 
truly,  as  her  poems  show.  In  an  unexpected  light  on  orchards, 
in  a  wistful  mood  of  meadow  or  wood-border  held  secure  for  a 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xiu. 


Emily  Dickinson  33 

moment  before  it  vanished ;  in  the  few  books  that  she  read — 
her  Keats,  her  Shakespeare,  her  Revelation;  in  the  echoes,  ob 
scure  in  origin,  that  stirred  within  her  own  mind  and  soul,  now  a 
tenuous  melody,  now  a  deep  harmony,  a  haunting  question, 
or  a  memorable  affirmation ; — everywhere  she  displayed  some 
thing  of  the  mystic's  insight  and  joy.  And  she  expressed  her 
experience  in  her  poems,  forgetting  the  world  altogether,  intent 
only  on  the  satisfaction  of  giving  her  fluid  life  lasting  form,  her 
verse  being  her  journal.  Yet  the  impulse  to  expression  was 
probably  not  strong,  because  she  wrote  no  poems,  save  one  or 
two,  as  she  herself  asserts,  until  the  winter  1861-62,  when  she 
was  over  thirty  years  old.  In  the  spring  of  1862  she  wrote  a 
letter  to  Higginson  beginning,  "Are  you  too  deeply  occupied  to 
say  if  my  verse  is  alive  ?  The  mind  is  so  near  itself  it  cannot  see 
distinctly,  and  I  have  none  to  ask."  Discerning  the  divine 
spark  in  her  shapeless  verse,  he  welcomed  her  advances,  and 
became  her  "preceptor,"  loyally  listened  to  but,  as  was  in 
evitable,  mainly  unheeded.  Soon  perceiving  this,  Higginson 
continued  to  encourage  her,  for  many  years,  without  trying  to 
divert  her  lightning-flashes.  In  "H.  H." — Helen  Hunt  Jack 
son,  x  herself  a  poetess  of  some  distinction,  and  her  early  school 
mate  at  Amherst — she  had  another  sympathetic  friend,  who, 
suspecting  the  extent  of  her  production,  asked  for  the  post  of 
literary  executor.  At  length,  in  1890,  a  volume  edited  by 
Higginson  and  Mabel  Loomis  Todd  was  published,  Poems  by 
Emily  Dickinson,  arranged  under  various  heads  according  to 
subject.  The  book  succeeded  at  once,  six  editions  being  sold 
in  the  first  six  months;  so  that  a  second  series,  and  later  a  third, 
seemed  to  be  justified.  From  the  first  selection  to  the  third, 
however,  there  is  a  perceptible  declension. 

The  subject  division  adopted  by  her  editors  serves  well 
enough:  Life,  Love,  Nature,  Time  and  Eternity.  A  mystical 
poetess  sequestered  in  a  Berkshire  village,  she  naturally  con 
cerned  herself  with  neither  past  nor  present,  but  with  the  things 
that  are  timeless.  Apparently  deriving  no  inspiration  from  the 
war  to  which  Massachusetts,  including  her  preceptorial  colonel, 
gave  itself  so  freely,  she  spent  her  days  in  brooding  over  the 
mystery  of  pain,  the  true  nature  of  success,  the  refuge  of  the 
tomb,  the  witchcraft  of  the  bee's  murmur,  the  election  of  love, 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chaps,  vi  and  XI. 

VOL.   Ill — 3 


34  Later  Poets 

the  relation  of  deed  to  thought  and  will.  On  such  subjects  she 
•jotted  down  hundreds  of  little  poems. 

Though  she  had  an  Emersonian  faith  that  fame,  if  it  be 
longed  to  her,  could  not  escape  her,  she  cared  nothing  at  all 
about  having  it;  like  not  a  few  Transcendentalists,  she  might 
have  written  on  the  lintels  of  her  door-post,  Whim.  That  was 
her  guiding  divinity,  Whim  in  a  high  sense :  not  unruliness,  for 
all  her  impishness,  but  complete  subjection  to  the  inner  dictate. 
She  obeyed  it  in  her  mode  of  life,  in  her  friendships,  in  her 
letters,  in  her  poems.  It  makes  her  poetry  eminently  spontane 
ous — as  fresh  and  artless  as  experience  itself — in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  she  was  not  a  spontaneous  singer.  The  ringing  bursts 
of  melody  that  are  characteristic  of  the  born  lyrical  poet,  such 
as  Burns,  she  was  incapable  of;  but  she  had  insight,  and  intense, 
or  rather  tense,  emotion,  and  expressed  herself  with  an  eye 
single  to  the  truth.  Something  she  derived  from  her  reading, 
no  doubt,  from  Emerson,  the  Brownings,  Sir  Thomas  Browne; 
but  rarely  was  poet  less  indebted.  From  her  silent  thought  she 
derived  what  is  essential  in  her  work,  and  her  whole  effort  was 
to  state  her  findings  precisely.  She  could  not  deliberately 
arrange  her  thoughts;  "when  I  try  to  organize,"  she  said,  "my 
little  force  explodes  and  leaves  me  bare  and  charred."  If  she 
revised  her  work,  as  she  did  industriously,  it  was  to  render  it 
not  more  attractive  but  truer. 

Her  poems  are  remarkable  for  their  condensation,  their 
vividness  of  image,  their  delicate  or  pungent  satire  and  irony, 
their  childlike  responsiveness  to  experience,  their  subtle  feeling 
for  nature,  their  startling  abruptness  in  dealing  with  themes 
commonly  regarded  as  trite,  their  excellence  in  imaginative 
insight  and  still  greater  excellence  in  fancy.  Typical  is  such  a 
poem  as  that  in  which  she  celebrates  the  happiness  of  a  little 
stone  on  the  road,  or  that  in  which  she  remarks  with  gleeful 
irony  upon  the  dignity  that  burial  has  in  store  for  each  of  uS — 
coach  and  footmen,  bells  in  the  village,  "as  we  ride  grand 
along."  Emily  Dickinson  takes  us  to  strange  places;  one  never 
knows  what  is  in  store.  But  always  she  is  penetrating  and 
dainty,  both  intimate  and  aloof,  challenging  lively  thought  on 
our  part  while  remaining,  herself,  a  charmingly  elfish  mystery. 
Her  place  in  American  letters  will  be  inconspicuous  but  secure. 

Also  born  a  New  Englander,  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  re- 


Aldrich  35 

mained  essentially  a  New  Englander  all  his  days.  It  is  true 
that  he  never  sympathized  with  the  occupations  of  the  New 
England  mind  in  his  time,  and  that  his  dedication  of  his  art  to 
beauty  is  not  in  the  tradition  of  that  ''reformatory  and  didac 
tic''  section,  and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  New  York  left  its 
metropolitan  imprint  on  nearly  all  his  work.  Yet  most  of  his 
career  belongs  to  New  England,  and  he  himself  liked  to  say 
that  if  he  was  not  genuine  Boston  he  was  at  least  Boston- 
plated  ;  nor  is  it  quite  fanciful  to  assert  that  his  somewhat  pain 
ful  artistic  integrity  is  largely  a  re-orientation  of  New  England 
principle  and  thoroughness.  In  him,  Puritan  morality,  after 
passing  through  Hawthorne,  half  artist  and  half  moralist,  be 
comes  wholly  artistic. 

Aldrich 's  Salem  was  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  the 
"Rivermouth"  of  The  Story  of  a  Bad  Boy,  sleepy,  elm-shaded, 
full  of  traditions,  bordered  by  the  ocean,  where  he  spent  many 
an  hour,  as  he  wrote  reminiscently,  "  a  little  shade  wandering 
along  shore,  picking  up  shells,  and  dreaming  of  a  big  ship  to 
come  and  carry  him  across  the  blue  water."  Three  years  of 
his  boyhood  he  lived  in  New  Orleans,  imbibing  sights  and  moods 
quite  other  than  those  of  the  North  Shore  boy,  travelling,  too, 
up  and  down  the  Mississippi  and  receiving  impressions  never 
to  be  forgotten.  A  professed  and  hot-headed  Southerner,  he 
returned  to  Portsmouth  to  prepare  for  college,  but,  on  the  death 
of  his  father,  gave  up  Harvard  and  went  to  New  York  at  the  age 
of  seventeen,  where  he  entered  upon  a  career  as  counting-room 
clerk,  contributor  to  periodicals,  and  assistant  editor  of  the 
Home  Journal  under  N.  P.  Willis.1  During  these  early  years 
he  published  several  volumes  of  poems.  The  first,  The  Bells 
(1855),  does  little  more  than  indicate  his  juvenile  masters— 
Chatterton,  Keats,  Tennyson,  Longfellow,  Poe,  Willis,  among 
whom  Tennyson  is  perhaps  the  most  important  in  the  light  of 
his  later  work.  The  fourth,  The  Balla<l  of  Babie  Bell,  and  Other 
Poems  (1859),  marks  his  first  success — feabie  Bell  itself  he  wrote 
when  but  nineteen.  Then  came  the  war,  and  adventurous  war 
correspondence,  but  Aldrich  was  by  nature  nearly  as  timeless  as 
Hawthorne,  and  in  1862  returned  to  his  versecraft  by  no  means 
transformed.  Two  or  three  of  his  poems,  including  The  Shaw 
Memorial  Ode,  show  the  influence  of  war  idealism,  but  most  of 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  in. 


36  Later  Poets 

his  best  work  apparently  owes  nothing  to  the  incitements  of 
those  stirring  days.  To  him,  indeed,  the  victory  of  1865  meant 
not  Appomatox  but  marriage,  an  excellent  editorial  position  in 
Boston,  and  the  publication  of  his  collected  poems  in  the  re 
nowned  Blue  and  Gold  series  of  Ticknor  and  Fields — an  event 
in  Boston,  as  Bliss  Perry  remarks,  equivalent  to  election  to  the 
French  Academy. 

In  New  York  he  had  been  associated  with  the  foremost 
writers  of  the  "school"  there — most  intimately  with  Bayard 
Taylor,  the  Stoddards,  Stedman,  William  Winter,  and  Fitz- 
James  O'Brien.  These  and  other  members  of  the  group  agreed 
in  condemning  Boston  and  respectability  in  general,  and  es 
pousing  beauty  and  an  enfranchised  moral  life.  Yet  their 
freedom  was  one  of  manners  rather  than  of  morals;  even  the 
Bohemians — headed  by  the  satiric  Henry  Clapp — who  fore 
gathered  at  PfafFs  below  the  pavement  at  647  Broadway  and 
gave  free  rein  to  their  impulses,  seem  to  have  had  the  usual 
impulses  of  the  Hebraizing  Anglo-Saxon  if  not  of  the  Puritan. 
Aldrich  was  not  a  Bohemian  of  any  type ;  nor  was  he  by  tempera 
ment  a  Manhattan  journalist,  but  rather  a  gently  mirthful 
New  Englander,  who  felt  eminently  at  home  in  the  compan^  of 
Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes,  and  others  whom  he  met  through 
Fields,  and  who  preferred  the  "respectable"  social  standing  of 
a  knight  of  the  pen  in  Boston  to  the  incomplete  Bohemianism  of 
New  York.  For  nine  years  he  edited  Ticknor  and  Fields's; 
Every  Saturday,  while  in  the  next  room  Fields  and  William 
Dean  Howells  edited  The  Atlantic  Monthly;  then,  upon  How- 
ells's  resignation  in  1881,  he  entered  upon  a  nine-years'  edi 
torship  of  the  Atlantic.  Travel  was  an  item  of  importance 
in  these  later  years.  He  wandered  through  Spain,  one  of  his 
old  castles  in  the  air,  and  through  the  rich  Orient,  where  his 
poetic  fancy  was  always  at  ease,  and  he  travelled  round  the 
world  twice.  Travel,  and  reading  in  foreign  literature,  added 
to  an  attractive  cosmopolitanism  in  his  spirit  that  marks  him 
off  from  some  of  his  Boston  friends.  He  retained  to  the  end  a 
boyishness  of  disposition  that  made  him  personally  winning, 
together  with  an  intellectual  liveliness  that  earned  him  a  na 
tional  reputation  as  a  wit  and  the  friendly  admiration  of  no  less 
a  man  than  Mark  Twain.  He  died  in  Boston  in  1907. 

Aldrich 's  unfailing  good  fortune  was  only  a  fitting  reward 


Aldrich  37 

for  a  single-hearted  devotion  to  art  that  is  too  rare  in  the  history 
of  American  literature.  His  faith  as  an  artist  was  that,  while 
many  fine  thoughts  have  perished  through  inadequate  expres 
sion,  even  a  light  fancy  may  be  immortal  by  reason  of  its  "per 
fect  wording."  There  is  here  a  suggestion  of  embellishment 
that  marks  the  limit  of  Aldrich's  reach.  It  was  well  enough  for 
him  to  object  to  ' '  Kiplingese "  and  to  the  negligee  dialect  of 
James  Whitcomb  Riley,  but  he  himself  went  to  the  other  ex 
treme  in  his  solicitude  for  beautiful  form.  Even  more  than  his 
master  Tennyson,  he  loved  fine  form  so  ardently  that  he  cared 
too  little  whether  the  embodied  thought  was  equally  distin 
guished.  That  he  realized  his  danger  is  indicated  by  his  verses 
At  the  Funeral  of  a  Minor  Poet.  Some  thought  the  poet's 
workmanship,  he  says, 

more  costly  than  the  thing 
Moulded  or  carved,  as  in  those  ornaments 
Found  at  Mycenae; 

and  yet  in  defence  it  may  be  said  that  Nature  herself  works 
thus,  lavishing  endless  patience  "upon  a  single  leaf  of  grass  or 
a  thrush's  song";  or,  as  he  puts  it  in  one  of  his  prose  papers, 
"A  little  thing  may  be  perfect,  but  perfection  is  not  a  little 
thing." 

Many  of  Aldrich's  poems,  however,  have  substance  enough 
to  deserve  the  embalming  power  of  fine  form.  Their  extra 
ordinary  neatness,  precision,  and  delicacy,  their  fascinating 
melody,  are  again  and  again  conjoined  with  a  mood  or  concep 
tion  so  subtly  true  or  so  vividly  felt  that  we  discern  in  them  the 
classic  imprint.  Latakia,  On  Lynn  Terrace,  Resurgam,  Sleep, 
Frost-Work,  Invita  Minerva,  The  Flight  of  the  Goddess,  Books  and 
Seasons,  Memory,  Enamoured  Architect  of  Airy  Rhyme,  Palabras 
Carinosas,  are  poems  that  we  may  re-read  repeatedly  with  an 
ever  renewed  sense  of  their  beauty.  They  offer  jpo  profound 
criticism  of  life;  but  much  great  literature  does  not.  Aldrich's 
other  work — his  long  narrative  poems,  of  which  he  regarded 
Wyndham  Towers  and  Friar  Jerome  as  the  best;  his  Judith  of 
Bethulia,  a  dramatic  poem;  and  his  occasional  poems,  such  as 
the  Ode  on  the  Unveiling  of  the  Shaw  Memorial  on  Boston  Com 
mon — is  work  in  kinds  in  which  other  American  poets  have 
done  better.  But  none  of  them  has  done  better  than  he  in 


38  Later  Poets 

vers  de  societe,  in  sonnets,  and  very  short  poems  generally; 
indeed,  the  quality  of  Aldrich  is  the  more  apparent  the  shorter 
the  poem,  many  of  his  best  poems  being  quatrains.  In  Songs 
and  Sonnets,  a  selection  from  his  work  published  in  1906,  the 
shorter  poems  have  been  brought  together  in  a  captivating 
little  volume.  Aldrich  called  Herrick  "a  great  little  poet"; 
he  merits  the  title  himself. I 

In  the  Transcendental  period,  it  was  said  that  one  could  not 
throw  a  stone  in  Boston  without  hitting  a  poet;  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  century  one's  chances  would  have  been  little  better. 
Representative,  perhaps,  of  the  countless  lesser  poets  of  New 
England  in  this  period  are  Thomas  William  Parsons  (1819- 
92),  a  Boston  dentist  who  translated  the  Inferno  admirably  in 
terza  rima  and  wrote  poems  of  small  merit  save  On  a  Bust  of 
Dante,  which,  through  its  Dantesque  elevation  and  purity  of 
form,  deserves  to  rank  with  the  best  American  lyrics;  William 
Wetmore  Story  (1819-95),  of  Salem,  lawyer,  later  sculptor  in 
Italy,  his  adopted  home,  a  poet  influenced  by  Tennyson  and 
Browning,  whose  passionate  Cleopatra  and  lofty  Praxiteles  and 
Phryne  are  among  his  most  successful  work;  Lucy  Larcom 
(1826-93),  wri°  spent  her  girlhood  in  the  Lowell  cotton  mills, 
and  whose  lyrics,  too  often  sentimental,  show  the  influence  of 
Whittier;  Celia  Thaxter  (1836-94),  whose  father  was  lighthouse 
keeper  on  the  Isles  of  Shoals,  where  the  blended  beauties  and 
austerities  of  sea  and  rocks  evoked  many  poems  of  nature  in  her 
sympathetic  temperament;  and  J.  G.  Holland  (1819-81), 2  who 
lived  in  Massachusetts  till  1870,  when  he  founded  Scribner's 
Monthly  (now  The  Century  Magazine)  in  New  York,  a  versatile 
author  whose  poems,  such  as  the  long  Bitter  Sweet  and  Kathrina, 
little  read  now,  were  widely  popular  in  their  day. 

Of  the  New  York  authors,  the  most  prominent  in  the  first 
part  of  the  half  century  was  Bayard  Taylor.  As  Aldrich  belongs 
not  only  to  New  York  but  also  to  New  England,  so  Taylor 
belongs  not  only  to  New  York  but  also  to  Pennsylvania,  where 
he  was  born  in  Kennett  Square  in  1825.  By  that  time  the  State 
had  lost  what  literary  glories  it  had  ever  had,  and  although  a 
new  brood  of  native  writers  had  just  been  born — T.  Buchanan 
Read  in  1822,  Boker3  in  1823,  Leland4in  1824 — New  York  was 

1  For  Aldrich's  prose  see  Book  III,  Chap.  vi.  *  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xi. 

J  See  Book  II,  Chap.  n.  4  See  Book  III,  Chap.  ix. 


Taylor  39 

already  obviously  destined  to  be  the  literary  centre  of  the 
future. 

Bayard  Taylor  is  fairly  representative  of  his  State  by  virtue 
of  his  Quaker  descent  and  his  mixed  English  and  German  blood. 
Aside  from  the  abounding  life  of  nature  in  which  he  immersed 
himself  as  a  boy,  he  found  inhibitions  on  all  sides :  in  his  moral 
and  religious  life,  in  his  practical  life  as  a  farmer's  son,  and  in  his 
intellectual  life  as  a  boy  for  whose  education  means  were  want 
ing.  Gifted  with  the  impetus  of  genius,  he  broke  away  from 
these  hindrances,  and  embarked  upon  that  varied  and  adven 
turous  career  of  expansion  that  marks  both  his  greatness  and 
his  littleness.  He  read  all  the  books,  especially  poetry  and 
travel,  he  could  lay  his  hands  on;  he  wrote  verse  from  his 
seventh  year  onward;  he  drew  and  painted;  he  dreamed  of 
foreign  lands;  he  aspired  to  the  heights — envying  the  bird,  the 
weathercock,  the  balloonist.  He  had  the  expansiveness  that 
often  accompanies  vigorous  health  of  mind  and  body — at  seven 
teen  was  six  feet  tall  and  enjoyed  a  magnetic  power  that  fore 
shadowed  his  friendships  and  his  personal  impressiveness.  Two 
yearslater,in  1 844,  having  won  the  interest  of  Ruf  us  W.  Griswold, 
he  was  enabled  to  publish  his  first  book,  Ximena,  in  Philadelphia ; 
though  in  later  years,  recognizing  the  emptiness  of  the  fifteen 
poems  that  made  up  the  book,  he  repented  of  it. 

Already,  in  a  sense,  his  poetry  was  subordinate  to  his  travels ; 
Ximena  was  intended  to  supply  the  means  necessary  for  the 
voyage  abroad  that  he  had  long  cherished  for  its  own  sake  and 
for  its  educational  value.  At  a  time  when  American  pilgrims 
were  a  curiosity,  he  wandered  through  Europe  for  two  years, 
virtually  without  funds,  enduring  and  enjoying  every  manner  of 
hardship  and  adventure.  Particularly  in  Germany,  where  he 
was  subsequently  to  marry  and  to  find  the  material  for  his  most 
ardent  literary  studies,  he  felt  more  at  home  than  in  repressive 
Kennett.  Views  Afoot  (1846)  told  the  story  of  these  years,  and 
launched  Taylor  upon  a  career  of  travel  and  journalistic  dis 
tinction  that  made  his  fame  international.  Of  all  the  lands 
that  he  lived  in  or  roamed  through,  the  countries  of  the  Orient 
captivated  this  eager  romanticist  most  completely. 

It  needed  not  [says  Stedman]  Hicks's  picture  of  the  bronzed 
traveller,  in  his  turban  and  Asiatic  costume,  smoking,  cross-legged, 


40  Later  Poets 

upon  a  roof-top  of  Damascus,  to  show  us  how  much  of  a  Syrian  he 
was.  We  saw  it  in  the  down-drooping  eyelids  which  made  his 
profile  like  Tennyson's;  in  his  acquiline  nose,  with  the  expressive 
tremor  of  the  nostrils  as  he  spoke;  in  his  thinly  tufted  chin,  his 
close-curling  hair,  his  love  of  spices,  music,  coffee,  colours,  and 
perfumes. 

The  author  of  Poems  of  the  Orient  (1854)  was  indeed  a  fitting 
leader  and  high  priest  of  the  cult  of  the  East  that  was  one 
characteristic  of  the  New  York  school. 

After  his  first  voyage  to  Europe,  Taylor  determined,  in 
1847,  to  try  to  make  a  living  as  a  writer  in  New  York;  "this 
mighty  New  York,"  as  he  calls  it  with  his  appetite  for  large 
experience,  ' 'here  is  the  metropolis  of  a  continent ! "  It  was  the 
New  York  of  Bryant,  Halleck,  and  Willis  to  which  he  had  come ; 
it  was  under  Willis's  wing  that  he  came  to  know  the  literary  life 
of  the  city.  When  Greeley,  the  next  year,  invited  him  to  a  post 
on  the  Tribune,  Taylor  formed  a  connection  that  was  to  give 
him  a  sense  of  security  for  many  years.  In  the  newspaper 
rooms  he  now  wrote  for  fifteen  hours  a  day.  He  also  contrived 
to  see  a  good  deal  of  R.  H.  Stoddard,  Boker,  Read,  William 
Winter,  and  later  Aldrich,  who  were  to  be  his  closest  friends. 
He  knew  the  Bohemians  well  enough  not  to  be  one  of  them; 
though  he  could  scarcely  avoid  having  some  traits  in  common 
with  them,  since  Bohemianism  in  one  form  or  another  has  been 
a  characteristic  of  New  York  literary  life  from  the  days  of  the 
Knickerbocker  school.  When  the  war  came  he  sold  a  share  of 
his  Tribune  stock  so  that  his  brother  might  enlist  in  the  army; 
this  he  regarded  as  his  "bit."  The  next  year  he  was  in  Wash 
ington  as  war  correspondent  for  the  Tribune,  but  his  activity 
in  that  capacity  was  cut  short  by  a  chance,  too  good  to  be 
sacrificed,  to  see  Russia  and  Central  Asia  as  Secretary  of  the 
Legation  in  Russia.  His  Gettysburg  Ode,  despite  the  fact  that 
his  brother  died  on  that  field,  is  distinguished  neither  in  its 
poetry  nor  in  its  grasp  of  the  significance  of  the  war. '  Mean 
while  he  had  built,  in  his  old  Pennsylvania  haunts,  a  manorial 
house  named  Cedarcroft,  at  a  cost  of  $17,000,  then  a  good  deal 
of  money, — a  roomy  dwelling  with,  typically,  a  tower  that 
commanded  an  extended  view  of  the  gentle  Pennsylvania 
countryside.  Cedarcroft  became  a  haven  of  refuge  from  his 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  n. 


Taylor  41 

arduous  travels,  where  he  might  write  undisturbed,  and  con 
verse  at  ease  with  Boker  and  Stedman  and  the  rest,  and  smoke 
his  narghile,  and  shock  the  good  people  of  Kennett  through  his 
Continental  Gemuthlichkeit  in  the  use  of  liquor;  it  became  also, 
unfortunately,  as  Stoddard  says,  "a  Napoleonic  business  for  a 
poet,"  who,  in  committing  himself  to  earning  a  large  income, 
sometimes  $18,000  a  year,  by  writing  prose,  appreciably  in 
jured  his  poetry. 

And  poetry  was  his  passion,  his  religion,  as  he  says  with 
proud  humility  in  Porphyrogenitus.  In  1874  ne  told  Howells 
that  he  was  trying  desperately  to  bury  his  old  reputation  as  a 
traveller  and  writer  of  travel  books  ' '  several  thousand  fathoms 
deep  "  and  to  create  a  new  one.  His  prose  he  wrote  with  fatal 
facility,  performing  prodigies  of  speed,  but  his  poetry  he  com 
posed  with  the  most  painstaking  care,  spending  hours  over  a 
couplet,  if  necessary,  till  it  satisfied  him.  Like  Aldrich,  he  de 
spised  American  dialect  verse.  He  venerated  the  great  traditions 
of  poesy,  and  never  threw  off  the  influence  of  his  best -loved 
masters,  Tennyson  and  Shelley.  The  "Immortal  Brother"  of 
his  Ode  to  Shelley  has  left  traces  in  most  of  his  poetical  work. 

But,  after  all,  it  is  Goethe,  rather  than  Shelley,  who  is  the 
index  to  Taylor's  mind.  He  was  so  devoted  to  Goethe,  and  to 
German  literature  generally,  that  Whitelaw  Reid  found  it 
necessary  to  say  that  "those  who  did  not  know  him,  have  some 
times  described  him  as  more  German  than  American."  Some 
acquaintance  with  the  German  language  he  picked  up  at  home; 
far  more  he  gathered  in  his  hibernation  in  Germany  in  the  first 
year  of  his  wanderings  abroad ;  in  time  he  spoke  it  like  a  native, 
and  composed  poems  in  it,  including  a  Jubel-lied  (Berlin,  1870) 
celebrating  German  unity.  He  enjoyed  life  in  Germany  much 
as  an  earlier  and  greater  Pennsylvanian  cosmopolite,  Franklin, 
enjoyed  life  in  London  and  Paris,  but  his  loyalty  to  America 
was  never  in  question.  He  came  to  know  the  great  men  of  Ger 
many,  including  Bismarck,  who,  commenting  on  a  novel  by 
Taylor,  remarked  that  the  villain  was  allowed  to  escape  too 
easily.  In  1869  he  was  made  non-resident  professor  of  German 
literature  at  Cornell,  where  he  gave  courses  of  lectures.  In 
1870  he  completed  his  admirable  translation  of  Faust  in  the 
original  metres,  which  he  had  projected  twenty  years  before, 
and  over  which  he  had  laboured  with  something  of  the  devotion 


4*  Later  Poets 

of  Carlyle.  This  translation  will  doubtless  come  to  be  regarded 
as  Bayard  Taylor's  foremost  achievement.  It  was  largely  in 
strumental  in  obtaining  for  him  the  appointment,  in  1878,  as 
Minister  to  Germany,  whither  he  sailed  thoroughly  worn  out 
with  congratulations  and  flowers  and  champagne.  Excessively 
hard  work  had  taken  its  revenges,  and  he  was  never  to  enjoy  the 
great  future  that  the  new  life  in  Germany  held  out  to  him — he 
was  never,  for  one  thing,  to  carry  out  his  fond  plan  of  writing 
the  biography  of  Goethe,  a  task  for  which  he  was  well  fitted. 
He  died  soon  after  reaching  Germany. 

His  death  is  the  symbol  of  his  life.  His  whole  career,  his 
poetical  achievement  most  of  all,  was  an  approximation  to  high 
distinction  that  was  frustrated  through  both  outer  and  inner 
forces.  He  was  cast  in  a  large,  a  Goethean  mould;  he  aspired 
highly  and  in  many  directions,  seeking  self-realization,  but  he 
lacked — outwardly — freedom  from  worldly  troubles  and — in 
wardly — Goethe's  ideal  of  Entsagung.  His  buoyant  enthusi 
asm,  his  capacity  for  hard  work,  tended  to  deploy  in  the  void 
because  of  his  lack  of  concentration  and  true  harmony.  He 
sought  what  he  liked  to  call  "cosmical  experience,"  but  in  his 
eagerness  he  lost  himself. 

The  consequences  are  plainly  visible  in  his  poetry.  It  is  the 
poetry  of  a  man  who  has  "aspired"  rather  than  "attained." 
It  is,  to  begin  with,  dangerously  versatile.  Aside  from  his 
varied  experiments  in  prose,  Taylor  wrote  lyrics,  pastorals, 
idylls,  odes,  dramatic  lyrics,  lyrical  dramas,  translations,  poems 
in  German,  poems  in  every  mood  and  every  metre,  poems  con 
sciously  or  unconsciously  imitative  of  a  host  of  poets  (he  had  a 
remarkable  but  ill-controlled  verbal  memory),  poems  on  themes 
Oriental,  Greek,  Norse,  American  from  coast  to  coast,  poems 
classical,  sentimental,  romantic,  realistic,  poems  of  love,  of 
nature,  of  art.  In  most  of  this  work  he  was  acceptable  to  his 
age ;  in  very  little  is  he  acceptable  to  a  later  time.  His  poetry, 
again,  is  diffuse,  as  the  poetry  of  a  fifteen-hour-a-day  journalist 
is  likely  to  be.  Despite  a  certain  buoyant  resonance,  a  reso 
nance,  however,  rarely  full  enough ;  despite  a  frequent  delicacy 
of  perception  and  expression;  despite  a  sense  of  melody  that 
seldom  fails;  despite  a  simplicity  of  method  and  phrasing  that 
betokens  sincerity; — despite  all  these  merits  and  others,  his 
poetry  attracts  mildly  because  it  is  diffuse,  and  it  is  diffuse, 


R.  H.  Stoddard  43 

fundamentally,  because  it  is  shallow.  In  his  ode  on  Goethe, 
written  three  years  before  Taylor  died,  conscious  of  his  "lighter 
muscle"  he  asks  with  an  undercurrent  of  sadness: 

How  charge  with  music  powers  so  vast  and  free, 
Save  one  be  great  as  he? 

Taylor,  with  all  his  aspiration  and  energy,  was  ill-educated, 
ill -disciplined,  emotionally  and  intellectually  unsymmetrical. 
He  was  too  fond  of  his  narghile  and  of  melon-seeds  brought  all 
the  way  from  Nijni-Novgorod.  He  learned  modern  Greek 
before  he  learned  ancient  Greek.  His  few  good  poems,  such  as 
the  popular  Bedouin  Song,  John  Reed,  The  Quaker  Widow,  Eu- 
phorion,  are  far  too  few.  He  had  latent  powers,  if  not  supreme 
power,  but  it  was  misdirected.  To  his  contemporaries,  he  was 
a  distinguished  poet  as  well  as  traveller;  to  us  he  is  an  interest 
ing  personality. l 

While  Shelley  was  Taylor's  poet,  Richard  Henry  Stoddard 
found  in  Keats,  as  he  says  in  a  verse  tribute,  the  Master  of  his 
soul.  As  a  boy,  he  "lived  for  Song,"  and  throughout  his  life, 
in  surroundings  essentially  alien  and  "an  age  too  late,"  he 
dedicated  himself  to  poetry  with  a  happiness  and  dignity,  and 
with  a  degree  of  success  in  his  own  day,  quite  out  of  proportion 
to  the  merit  of  his  achievement. 

A  New  Englander  like  Aldrich  and  Stedman,  he  was  born  in 
the  same  year  with  Taylor  (1825),  in  Hingham,  Massachusetts, 
where  his  ancestors  were  hardy  sailors.  In  his  Recollections  he 
tells  of  his  grandfather's  house  by  the  sea,  where  his  mother 
sang  melancholy  hymns  at  nightfall,  and  of  the  ancient  church 
and  cemetery  that  gave  tone  to  the  family  life — "dying  seemed 
to  be  the  most  laudable  industry  of  the  time. ' '  His  father  being 
lost  at  sea,  the  pale  widow  and  her  delicate  boy  removed  to 
Boston,  and  later  to  New  York,  where  she  married  again. 
After  a  few  years  of  schooling,  Richard  was  set  to  work,  first 
as  errand-boy,  as  shop-boy,  and  as  legal  copyist, — spending 
part  of  his  petty  earnings  in  the  purchase  of  the  English  poets, 
—later  as  blacksmith  and  as  moulder  in  an  iron  foundry.  On 
the  threshold  of  manhood,  he  worked  in  the  foundry  for  three 
hard  years,  with  ever  one  consolation:  "the  day  would  end, 
night  would  come,  and  then  I  could  write  poetry."  In  1849  he 

1  For  Taylor's  travels  see  Book  III,  Chap.  xv. 


44  Later  Poets 

published  his  first  volume,  Footprints,  of  which  he  tells  us  one 
copy  was  sold  before  the  edition  was  given  to  the  flames.  Leav 
ing  the  foundry,  he  supported  himself,  like  Aldrich  and  Taylor, 
as  a  journalist,  becoming  in  time  literary  editor  of  the  World 
and  Mail  and  Express.  Meanwhile  he  had  married  Elizabeth 
Barstow,  of  Mattapoisett,  Massachusetts,  "one  of  those  irre 
pressible  girls,"  says  her  husband,  "who  are  sometimes  born  in 
staid  Puritan  families,"  who  later  attained  some  distinction  as 
novelist  and  poetess  ("for  she  became,"  says  Stoddard,  "the  best 
writer  of  blank  verse  of  any  woman  in  America"),  and  had 
secured  a  clerkship  in  the  New  York  Custom  House  which  he 
held  till  1870.  He  lived  in  New  York  through  many  of  its 
varied  decades  till  1903,  a  prominent  figure  in  the  literary  life, 
a  close  friend  of  Taylor,  Stedman,  and  the  others.  In  his  some 
what  austere  devotion  to  beauty  he  was  far  removed  from  the 
Bohemians;  he  states  specifically  with  regard  to  Pfaff's  "  I 
never  went  inside  the  place."  His  life  lacked  the  advantages— 
and  disadvantages — of  much  travel,  though,  like  his  friends, 
he  poetized  the  magical  Orient  (in  The  Book  of  the  East).  His 
personality  was  that  of  a  somewhat  angular  individualist,  out 
spoken,  vigorous,  inflexible  in  his  support  of  the  right.  He  was 
a  product  of  Puritan  New  England  as  well  as  a  disciple  of 
Keats. 

New  England  didacticism,  however,  is  all  but  absent  from 
his  poetry.  Here  and  there  is  a  trace,  now  and  then  a  whole 
poem,  such  as  On  the  Town,  a  harlot's  plea  for  justice,  which 
has  also,  it  is  true,  a  modernly  realistic  aspect;  but  otherwise 
the  world  of  sin  that  Hawthorne  loved  to  brood  over  and  the 
New  England  poets  sought  to  improve,  is  far  away.  He  began 
his  career  as  a  palpable  imitator  of  Keats's  sensuousness,  magi 
cal  epithet,  and  praise  of  beauty.  His  Autumn  is  little  more 
than  a  frank  copy  of  the  ode  by  Keats.  Other  early  poems  are 
full  of  echoes  of  Milton  and  Wordsworth.  Though  he  soon 
passed  into  his  own  manner,  which  was  never  highly  individu 
alized,  one  can  discern  his  masters  everywhere.  Some  of  his 
best  narrative  poetry,  such  as  Leonatus  and  Imogen,  is  agree 
ably  reminiscent  of  Keats.  His  blank  verse,  as  in  the  tribute 
to  Bryant,  The  Dead  Master,  often  has  power  and  accomplished 
variety,  but  it  is  not  individual.  Indeed,  it  may  not  be  unfair 
to  say  that  Stoddard  was  mainly  a  passionate  lover  of  poetry, 


Stedman  45 

more  passionate  than  the  others  of  the  New  York  group,  and 
not  so  much  a  natural  creator  of  it.  Creation  was,  to  him,  an 
inevitable  accident ;  enjoyment  of  others'  poetry  was  a  leading 
function  of  life.  Most  of  his  work  is  the  expression  of  common 
place  sentiment  and  tame  emotion.  Its  merit  is  melody  and 
deftness,  in  phrasing,  in  rhyming,  in  imagery.  Consequently 
his  best  work  is  doubtless  that  which  the  public  of  his  day  knew 
him  by,  his  lyrics,  as  in  the  pleasant  volume  Songs  of  Summer, 
diverse  snatches  of  song  without  attachment  to  time  or  place, 
also  without  much  meaning  or  purpose,  but  so  well  fashioned 
that  one  can  understand  why  Stoddard  was  once  a  prominent 
poet.  His  Lincoln,  an  H oration  Ode,  however,  still  has  power. J 

If  Bayard  Taylor's  handicap  was  travel,  and  Stoddard's 
uncongenial  labour,  Stedman's  was  business.  Though  born  of 
an  old  New  England  family  in  Hartford,  Connecticut,  and 
educated  at  Yale,  he  immersed  himself  so  thoroughly  in  Wall 
Street  that  he  belongs  to  New  York.  Probably  he  owed  less  to 
his  father,  lumber  merchant  and  devout  Christian,  than  to  his 
mother,  Elizabeth  Dodge  Stedman,  a  poetess  notable  chiefly 
for  her  ardent  emotional  life.  Of  her  son  she  wrote:  "As  soon 
as  he  could  speak  he  lisped  in  rhyme,  and  as  soon  as  he  could 
write,  which  was  at  the  age  of  six  years,  he  gave  shape  and 
measure  to  his  dreams.  He  was  a  sedate  and  solemn  baby." 
In  college,  as  the  youngest  in  a  class  of  more  than  one  hundred, 
he  developed  his  infantile  devotion  to  poetry,  winning  prizes, 
but  losing  his  sedateness  and  solemnity.  According  to  the 
Faculty  Records,  "Stedman,  Soph,  was  dismissed  for  having 
been  present  at  a  'dance  house'  near  the  head  of  the  wharf," 
this  being  apparently  his  culminating  indiscretion.  As  soon 
as  he  realized  his  error,  he  said  in  applying  for  his  degree  years 
later,  he  "resolved  to  obtain  a  higher  culture";  and,  taking 
himself  in  hand,  he  transformed  his  raw,  strong-willed,  high- 
spirited  youth  to  an  attractive  type  of  energetic,  idealistic  man 
hood.  In  1855  he  became  a  broker  in  New  York.  Associating 
himself  with  Greeley's  Tribune,  he  presently  found  himself  the 
popular  author  of  three  lively,  rather  journalistic  poems— 
The  Diamond  Wedding,  The  Ballad  of  Lager  Bier,  and  How  Old 
Brown  Took  Harper's  Ferry.  In  1860,  the  year  of  his  first 
volume,  Poems,  Lyric  and  Idyllic,  he  joined  the  staff  of  the 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  n. 


46  Later  Poets 

World.  For  this  newspaper  he  went  to  the  front,  in  1861,  as 
war  correspondent.  A  man  of  thirty  years  when  the  war  was 
over,  he  turned  to  the  life  of  Wall  Street,  becoming,  six  years 
later,  an  active  member  of  the  Stock  Exchange.  He  held  his 
seat  till  1900.  "There  was  no  such  market  for  literary  wares 
at  that  day  as  has  since  arisen,  and  I  needed  to  be  independent 
in  order  to  write  and  study."  Perhaps  so;  it  was  a  bitter 
problem  to  solve;  yet  there  is  little  question  that  Stedman's 
choice  limited  his  literary  achievement  in  quality  as  well  as 
quantity.  To  be  sure,  he  could  not  have  foreseen  the  financial 
misfortunes  that  beset  his  way  to  independence.  At  the  same 
time,  he  had  a  talent  for  business  that  might  better  not  have 
been  developed,  since  it  flourished  at  the  expense  of  a  rarer 
talent  that  he  possessed  for  literary  criticism  and  for  poetry. 
With  more  knowledge  and  the  discipline  of  hard  thinking,  his 
literary  criticism,  at  its  best  in  Poets  of  America  (1885),  might 
have  contributed  much  to  a  department  of  our  literature  that 
is  all  too  weak.  He  had  high,  if  not  the  highest,  seriousness, 
without  the  admixture  of  sentimentalism  that  often  accom 
panies  ideality  and  range. 

His  distinction  as  a  literary  critic  and  as  an  editor  of  an 
thologies  and  other  works  seems  to  have  given  rise  to  an  un 
warranted  presumption  in  his  favour  as  a  poet.  If  he  had  a 
voice  of  his  own,  he  spoke  in  uncertain  tones;  in  the  main  his 
poetry  is  an  echo  of  the  romantic  poets  and  Tennyson.  He 
seems  to  have  written  frequently  in  cold  blood;  at  least  he  told 
Winter  that  "it  was  his  custom  to  select  with  care  the  particu 
lar  form  of  verse  that  he  designed  to  use,  and  sometimes  to  in 
vent  the  rhymes  and  write  them  at  the  ends  of  the  lines  which 
they  were  to  terminate, — thus  making  a  skeleton  of  a  poem,  as 
a  ground-work  on  which  to  build."  Aside  from  his  war  verse1 
he  wrote  poems  on  New  York  themes,  the  best  of  which  is  Pan 
in  Wall  Street;  on  New  England  life  and  ideals,  including  the 
charming  lines  entitled  The  Doorstep;  on  The  Carib  Sea;  on 
special  occasions,  including  poems  on  Greeley  and  several  of 
the  New  England  poets ;  and  on  various  other  themes,  notably 
in  The  Hand  of  Lincoln  and  Stanzas  for  Music.  In  most  of 
this  work — limited  in  quantity  to  a  single  volume — Stedman's 
muse  is  decorously  uplifted  rather  than  elevated  of  its  own 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  n. 


Minor  New  York  Poets  47 

nature ;  it  rarely  sings  freely,  and,  if  it  never  offends,  also  never 
stirs  deeply.  At  a  public  meeting  in  his  memory,  his  friend 
William  Winter  expressed  Stedman's  literary  faith  in  a  compact 
phrase  when  he  said :  ' '  He  steadfastly  adhered  to  the  stately, 
lovely,  ancient  traditions  of  English  poetry."  Undidactic,  de 
voted  to  the  dignity  and  beauty  of  letters,  he  expressed  him 
self  in  the  idiom  of  the  tradition  of  beauty  in  literature,  both 
classical  and  modern.  His  protracted  studies  in  Theocritus  and 
the  other  early  idyllists  were  typical  of  his  scholarly  love  of 
literature.  He  himself  is  the  Pan  in  Wall  Street  of  one  of  his  few 
fascinating  poems :  among  the  bulls  and  bears  he  too  held 

a  Pan's-pipe  (fashioned 
Like  those  of  old), 

and  upon  it  he  could  sing  arrestingly  if  not  greatly. J 

Though  subordinate  in  genius  to  the  greater  New  Eng- 
landers, — Emerson,  Lowell,  Whittier,  and  the  rest, — the  poets 
of  the  New  York  school  made  a  positive  contribution  to  our 
literature.  Aside  from  the  intrinsic  merit  of  their  work,  they 
are  important  on  account  of  their  influence.  Holding  that 
poetry  is  amply  justified  through  its  beauty  and  the  happiness 
produced  in  us  by  its  beauty,  and  that  the  moral  element  is 
ancillary,  if  not  accidental  or  irrelevant,  they  prepared  the  way 
for  the  highly  accomplished  versecraft  that  is  characteristic  of 
the  declining  years  of  the  century.  Whether  this  highly  accom 
plished,  often  precious,  poetry  is  itself  admirable  is  scarcely 
open  to  question:  it  is  not  great,  but  it  provided  a  discipline 
that  American  poets  had  never  had  and  that  they  needed. 

Of  the  lesser  luminaries  in  New  York  little  need  be  said. 
They  include  William  Winter  (1836-1917),  who  early  came 
from  Massachusetts,  primarily  a  dramatic  critic2  but  also  the 
author  of  verses  resembling  those  of  his  poet  friends:  Emma 
Lazarus  (1849-87),  born  in  New  York  of  Portuguese  Jewish 
ancestry,  some  of  whose  work  is  remarkable  for  its  Hebraic 
intensity3;  and  the  Gary  sisters,  Alice  (1820-71)  and  Phoebe 
(1824-71),  who  came  from  Ohio,  importing  the  sentimental 
and  moralizing  tendency  of  the  age  along  with  a  sweetness  and 
beauty  by  virtue  of  which  they  still  have  some  charm.  Two 

1  For  his  prose  see  Book  III,  Chap.  xm.  3  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xm. 

3  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xm. 


48  Later  Poets 

Philadelphians  already  mentioned,  George  H.  Boker  (1823-90) r 
and  Thomas  B.  Read  (1822-72), 2  may  be  named  here  again  on 
account  of  their  association  with  writers  of  the  New  York 
group.  Boker,  distinguished  as  a  dramatist,  began  authorship 
with  The  Lesson  of  Life,  and  Other  Poems  in  1847  and  continued 
to  write  verse.  Read's  first  volume  appeared  in  Philadelphia 
in  the  same  year.  Among  his  poems  are  The  New  Pastoral 
(1855),  a  long  poem  dealing  with  American  pioneer  life,  The 
Wagoner  of  the  Alleghanies  (1862),  a  tale  of  the  Revolutionary 
War,  and  many  short  lyrics,  of  which  the  best  known  is  Sheri 
dan's  Ride. 

Although  Richard  Watson  Gilder  (1844-1909)  belongs  to 
the  same  general  group  with  Taylor,  Stoddard,  and  the  other 
"squires  of  poesy, "  as  they  called  themselves  a  trifle  ostenta 
tiously,  he  is  associated  with  a  later  and  more  public-spirited 
period  of  New  York  culture. 

Born  at  Bordentown,  New  Jersey,  he  was  educated  at  his 
father's  schools,  first  at  Bordentown,  then  at  Flushing.  The 
latter  school  failing,  his  father  re-entered  the  active  ministry 
shortly  before  the  Civil  War.  In  the  war,  the  father  served  as 
chaplain  till  his  death  in  1864;  a  son  served  in  a  Zouave  regi 
ment;  and  Richard,  a  boy  of  nineteen,  enlisted  in  Landis's 
Philadelphia  Battery  when  the  Confederate  invasion  threat 
ened  eastern  Pennsylvania.  The  war  over,  Richard  Watson 
Gilder  became  a  journalist  in  Newark,  soon  after  in  New  York, 
where,  in  1870,  he  became  the  assistant  editor  of  the  new 
periodical  known  as  Scribner's  Monthly.  When  his  chief,  Dr. 
J.  G.  Holland,  died  in  1881,  Gilder  assumed  control  of  the 
Century,  as  it  was  now  called,  giving  it  unsparingly  his  best 
energy  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century.  Partly  through 
his  own  interests,  partly  through  his  wife's  (Helena  de  Kay's) 
association  with  fellow  painters,  he  found  himself  surrounded 
by  friends  of  a  type  very  different  from  those  of  the  Bohe 
mians  and  squires  of  poesy — La  Farge,  Saint-Gaudens,  Stanford 
White,  Joseph  Jefferson,  Madame  Modjeska,  and,  in  the 
summers  on  Cape  Cod,  President  Cleveland.  Again,  unlike 
the  earlier  members  of  the  New  York  group,  he  became  an 
ardent  and  enlightened  humanitarian  and  publicist,  serving 
the  cause  of  good  government  in  city  and  nation.  "That  I  am 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  n.  2  See  Book  III,  Chap.  n. 


Gilder  49 

drawn  into  too  many  things,"  he  wrote  in  a  letter,  "is  perhaps 
true."  He  was  right;  both  his  health  and  his  work,  in  various 
fields,  were  impaired.  In  another  letter  he  refers  to  his  "in 
sufficient  but  irrepressible  verse,"  which  describes  it  well 
enough. 

He  began  verse  writing  under  happy  auspices.  Milton  was 
his  master  at  the  age  of  ten  or  twelve,  and  his  father  encouraged 
him  to  write.  Years  later,  he  chanced  to  meet  Helena  de  Kay 
at  the  very  time  that  he  came  upon  Rossetti's  translation  of  the 
Vita  Nuova;  the  result  of  the  conjunction  was  the  love  sonnets 
of  The  New  Day,  his  first  volume,  which  was  published  in  1875. 
With  its  slow,  heavily-freighted  lines,  its  solemn  music  and 
carefully  composed  imagery,  its  intense  feeling  not  fully  articu 
late,  its  occasional  vagueness  of  meaning,  it  contrasts  with  the 
obvious  and  more  lively  American  poetry  of  that  day  and  the 
day  before.  The  vagueness  of  meaning  Gilder  happily  es 
caped  in  his  later  work;  the  other  qualities  he  retained  and 
improved. 

Of  virtually  all  of  his  poetry,  the  dominant  trait_is_at_biQod- 
ing  intensity, — suggested  by  the  dark,  peering  eyes  of  the  man 
himself, — expressed  in  language  distilled  and  richly  associative, 
"the  low,  melodious  pour  of  musicked  words."  He  was  pas 
sionately  responsive  to  music,  to 

The  deep-souled  viola,  the  'cello  grave, 

The  many-mooded,  singing  violin, 

The  infinite,  triumphing,  ivoried  clavier 

— his  own  poetry  has  the  quality  of  orchestral  instruments, 
oftenest  the  grave  'cello.  Many  of  his  poems  are  concerned  with 
other  arts,  especially  painting  and  acting,  for  art  was  to  this 
"stickler  for  form,"  as  he  called  himself,  a  large  part  of  life. 
He  naturally  wrote  on  Modjeska,  Eleonora  Duse,  A  Monument 
of  Saint-Gaudens ,  An  Hour  in  a  Studio,  and  In  Praise  of  Por 
traiture  as  well  as  on  MacDowell,  The  Pathetic  Symphony,  A 
Fantasy  of  Chopin,  Paderewski,  and  Beethoven.  He  had,  too,  a 
love  of  the  Orient, — an  artist's  love  as  well  as  a  reflective  poet's, 
— that  led  him  to  add  In  Palestine,  and  Other  Poems  (1898)  to 
New  York's  considerable  body  of  literature  on  the  East. 

Yet  art  was  by  no  means  a  tower  of  ivory  to  this  public  man. 

VOL.  Ill — 4 


50  Later  Poets 

The  youth  of  the  Gettysburg  campaign  became  the  laureate  of 
the  Civil  War  heroes,  and  the  volume  of  his  poems  entitled 
For  the  Country  ( 1 897)  is  as  typical  as  any.  It  includes  Sheridan 
and  Sherman  and  the  excellent  sonnet  on  The  Life-Mask  of 
Abraham  Lincoln.  Gilder  took  his  place  eagerly  in  the  "wild, 
new,  teeming  world  of  men"  that  America  meant  to  him,  and 
desired  a  part,  as  he  stated  in  a  poem  written  abroad,  in  making 
it  not  only  free  and  strong  but  also  noble  and  pure — a  land  of 
justice  lifting  a  light  for  all  the  world  and  leading  into  the  Age  of 
Peace. 

New  York  fostered  if  not  produced  one  other  important 
poet,  Richard  Hovey,  who  was  born  in  1864,  when  Gilder  was  a 
young  man.  Follower  of  Whitman  and  the  Elizabethans,  and 
poet  in  his  own  right,  Hovey  won  the  enthusiasm  of  both  the 
conventional  school — especially  Stedman — and  the  eager  mod 
ernists  who  began  to  attract  attention  near  the  close  of  the 
century.  The  odd  mixture  of  loyalties  in  his  verse  is  paralleled 
by  the  curious  variety  in  his  life.  Born  in  Illinois,  he  lived  in 
Washington,  D.  C.,  graduated  from  Dartmouth  College,  New 
Hampshire,  studied  at  the  General  Theological  Seminary,  New 
York,  became  lay  assistant  at  the  Church  of  St.  Mary  the 
Virgin,  accepted  literature  as  his  profession,  and  ended  his 
brief  career  as  professor  of  English  literature  in  Barnard  College 
and  lecturer  in  Columbia  University.  Several  years,  also,  he 
lived  abroad — familiarizing  himself,  for  one  thing,  with  Ver- 
laine,  Mallarme,  and  the  later  symbolists,  and  becoming  one 
of  the  first  American  disciples  and  translators  of  Maeterlinck. 

Hovey's  early  death  deprived  us  of  a  poet  who  had  not  yet 
reached  the  height  of  his  powers.  Finer  work  than  he  actually 
produced  lay  ahead  unrealized,  but  it  was  probably  not  the 
unfinished  dramatic  work  which  he  had  come  to  regard  as  his 
magnum  opus, — Launcelot  and  Guenevere:  A  Poem  in  Dramas, 
which  he  began  to  publish  in  1 89 1 .  This  was  not  to  be  merely  a 
rehandling  of  ancient  poetic  material  by  an  idle  singer  of  an 
empty  day  but  a  profound  treatment  of  a  modern  problem  in 
terms  of  the  past — the  conflict  of  the  individual  and  society, 
and  the  establishment  of  a  right  relation  between  them.  Hovey 
planned  nine  plays,  though  he  completed  only  four.  He  ex 
pected  to  arrange  them  in  three  trilogies :  in  the  first,  Launcelot 
and  Guenevere  were  to  disregard  society;  in  the  second  they 


Hovey  5i 

were  to  disregard  themselves;  and  in  the  third  their  problem 
was  to  be  resolved.  It  was  a  tremendous  theme,  worthy  of  a 
poet  of  an  ampler  intellectual  endowment  than  Hovey's.  How 
high  a  flight  he  attempted  may  be  seen  in  Taliesin:  A  Masque 
(1900),  the  last  play  that  he  completed,  a  poet's  poem  which  to 
some  readers  has  been  Hovey  at  his  most  exalted,  while  others 
have  roundly  condemned  its  exuberant  fancy,  imagination,  and 
metaphysics.  It  is,  at  all  events,  a  remarkable  feat  in  rhythm- 
building,  astonishing  in  the  easy  mastery  with  which  the  poet 
passes  from  one  movement  to  another  and  in  the  variety  of 
musical  effects.  The  other  plays  are  clearer  and  more  sub 
stantial;  in  The  Marriage  of  Guenevere  (1895),  for  example,  the 
Queen  is  revealed  with  a  definiteness  unequalled  in  the  Arthur 
ian  tradition,  though  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  the  modern 
touch  is  in  this  respect  an  unmixed  advantage.  All  the  plays 
are  deftly  and  fluently  written,  but  they  fail  in  sustained  power. 
The  note  of  the  improvvisatore  is  never  away. 

This  note  is  not  so  fatal  in  the  lyric.  Hovey's  lyrics  time 
will  doubtless  adjudge  his  best  work.  He  has  little  weight, 
little  insight  of  the  profounder  sort,  but  he  has,  on  the  other 
hand,  unusual  fervor  and  elan,  and  much  insight  of  the  merely 
subtle  sort.  Sensitive,  tingling  with  life,  he  responds  to  the 
world  with  a  gaiety  not  so  much  thoughtless  as  thought -banish 
ing,  a  gaiety  alien  to  the  dominant  moods  of  modern  life  and 
hence  always  open  to  the  suspicion  of  affectation.  His  quality 
is  very  evident  in  the  three  series  of  Songs  from  Vagabondia 
(1893,  1896,  1900)  written  collaboratively  with  Bliss  Carman., 
They  express  impetuously,  a  little  artificially  at  times,  the  vaga 
bondage  of  the  soul  that  runs  like  a  gypsy  thread  through  the 
romantic  literature  of  the  century.  The  Wander -Lovers,  which 
sets  its  pace  in  the  first  line,  "Down  the  world  with  Marna!" 
is  in  its  way  a  nearly  perfect  thing.  In  a  distinct  part  of 
Hovey's  work,  his  poems  of  masculine  comradeship  and  college 
fraternity,  this  Bohemian  mood  is  expressed  in  a  really  notable 
way.  Spring,  for  instance,  read  at  a  fraternity  convention  in 
1896,  contains,  in  a  charming  natural  setting,  the  lines  beginning 
"Give  a  rouse,  then,  in  the  May-time"  which,  set  to  music  by 
Frederic  Field  Bullard,  are  familiar  to  college  youth  from  coast 
to  coast.  This  kind  of  thing  Hovey  could  do  better  than  any 
other  of  our  poets. 


52  Later  Poets 

His  poems  on  serious  themes  lack  the  delightful  assurance 
of  The  Wander-Lovers  and  Spring.  The  Call  of  the  Bugles,  one 
of  his  several  Spanish  War  poems,  is  only  intermittently  buoy 
ant  and  martial,  is  too  long,  and  is  scarcely  American  in  its 
sentiment  ' '  Great  is  war — great  and  fair ! "  In  a  rarer  mood  of 
Hovey's  is  Unmanifest  Destiny,  in  which,  as  in  Seaward,  his 
elegy  on  the  death  of  Thomas  William  Parsons,  his  tone  is 
impressively  reverent  and  his  music  richly  solemn. 

Another  Columbia  University  poet  of  latter-day  New  York 
was  the  accomplished  Frank  Dempster  Sherman  (1860-1916), 
professor  of  graphics,  an  ardent  philatelist  and  collector  of 
book-plates,  author  of  Madrigals  and  Catches  (1887),  Lyrics  for 
a  Lute  (i  890) ,  Little  Folk  Lyrics  (1892) ,  and  Lyrics  of  Joy  (1904) . 
The  titles  indicate  of  themselves  the  poetic  genres  to  which  he 
devoted  himself.  Whether  he  dealt  with  love,  or  nature,  or 
books,  his  lines  were  short  and  jocund.  His  range  was  narrow, 
and  quite  out  of  the  modern  current ;  but  his  love  of  music  and 
image  were  so  genuine  that  his  poems  reached  a  cordial  if  small 
audience. 

This  brings  us  to  the, poetry  of  the  West.  The  poets  of  the 
East  are,  in  one  sense,  a  survival  from  the  past ;  in  another  sense, 
a  bridge  leading  from  the  past  into  the  future.  The  West,  on 
the  other  hand,  having  the  initiative,  the  irreverence,  and  the 
breezy  optimism  of  a  new  country,  set  about  creating  a  litera 
ture  fashioned  in  its  own  image.  If  that  image  was  unbeautiful, 
it  was  at  least  sturdy  and  forward-looking.  At  times  the  West 
did  not  hesitate  to  use  the  past,  but  its  own  force  nearly  always 
gave  the  past  a  new  direction.  It  was  this  element  of  novelty 
that  delighted  ordinary  readers  even  in  the  conservative  East 
and  caused  England  to  find  in  Western  poetry,  as  it  found  in 
Whitman,  the  authentic  voice  of  the  New  World  at  last  be 
ginning  to  express  itself : 

Nothing  of  Europe  here — 
Or,  then,  of  Europe  fronting  morn  ward  still. 

For  this  hasty  generalization  there  is  some  semblance  of  justi 
fication,  since,  after  all,  as  Professor  Turner  has  shown  im 
pressively,  all  of  the  United  States  save  the  Atlantic  seaboard 
has  at  some  time  been  a  democratic  West  in  opposition  to  an 
aristocratic  East.  And  yet,  if  the  West  was  not  a  fixed  region, 


Western  Dialect  Poets  53 

it  was  merely  a  phase  in  national  development,  and  the  voice 
of  that  phase  is  not  the  voice  of  the  nation  itself. 

The  immigrant  character  of  the  Far  West  is  illustrated  by 
its  chief  writers,  Harte,  Miller,  and  Sill.  Bret  Harte,  born  in 
Albany,  never  became  quite  saturated  with  the  spirit  of  the 
West,  and  spent  a  little  more  than  half  of  his  total  years  in  the 
State  of  New  York  and  in  Great  Britain.  His  poetry  is  that  of 
a  gifted  man  of  letters  who  perceived  the  literary  possibilities 
of  the  material  lying  about  him  in  his  impressionable  young 
manhood  in  California.  The  picturesque  California  of  the 
early  fifties  he  presented  adroitly  not  only  in  his  short  stories 
but  also  in  such  poems  as  Plain  Language  from  Truthful  James 
(generally  known  as  The  Heathen  Chinee) ,  The  Society  upon  the 
Stanislaus,  Dickens  in  Camp,  and  Jim.  Some  of  these  poems 
were  dramatic  monologues,  commonly  in  dialect;  Harte's 
poems  in  conventional  English  were  less  successful,  though 
some  of  his  Spanish  Idyls  and  Legends  depict  attractively  the 
fading  glory  of  Spanish  rule  in  the  West.  Most  of  his  poems 
contain  humour  and  pathos,  often  blended,  as  in  the  short 
stories;  in  most  of  them  the  deft  technique,  especially  the  sur 
prising  turn  at  the  end,  adds  much  to  the  reader's  pleasure. 
His  range  was  considerable  but  his  excellence  nowhere  great 
enough  to  lift  him  above  the  minor  poets. z 

Harte's  East  and  West  Poems,  which  came  out  in  1871, 
exploited  "the  Pike, "  a  recurrent  figure  in  our  literature  since 
the  work  of  George  W.  Harris2  and  other  Southerners.  The 
Pike  County  Ballads  of  John  Hay  (1838-1905),  published  in 
the  same  year,  reached  an  extensive  audience,  English  as  well  as 
American ;  to  the  English  reviews,  indeed,  Hay  was  likely  to  be 
the  poet  of  Jim  Bludso  and  Little  Breeches  rather  than  one  of 
the  authors  of  a  monumental  life  of  Lincoln. 3  Since  1871  dialect 
poems  portraying  humble  life  in  a  definite  region  have  contri 
buted  a  striking  localism  to  our  minor  poetry. 

Possibly  the  truest  representative  of  the  Far  West  in  the 
poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  Joaquin  Miller  (1841-1913). 
Like  Whitman,  whom  he  resembles  in  more  ways  than  one, 
Miller  won  a  following  first  of  all  in  England,  ever  watchful  for 

1  For  Harte's  stories  see  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 
3  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xix. 
3  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xv. 


54  Later  Poets 

signs  of  the  indigenous  in  American  literature  and  finding  them 
in  Miller's  poetry  as  in  his  leonine  mane,  flannel  shirt,  and  high 
boots.  In  1870-71  the  "Oregon  Byron,"  then  in  London, 
achieved  a  popularity  as  sudden  as  that  of  his  master.  Songs  of 
the  Sierras,  first  published  many  thousand  miles  from  the  Sierras 
themselves,  was  widely  applauded,  and  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Swinburne,  and  Rossetti  received  this  "typical  American" 
author  as  a  brother  bard.  Then  America,  too,  discovered  him, 
and  he  was  soon  known  from  London  to  San  Francisco.  Al 
though  his  debt  to  Byron,  Coleridge,  and  other  romanticists  is 
obvious  to  any  reader,  his  verse  is  by  no  means  purely  imitative. 
If  his  subject  matter  had  been  less  novel,  it  is  hard  to  say  what 
his  poetry  would  have  been ;  certainly  we  may  say  that  it  owes 
at  least  as  much  to  its  novelty  of  theme  as  to  its  essential  quali 
ties.  The  element  of  imitation,  plain  as  it  is,  is  superficial;  his 
poetry  may  best  be  regarded,  as  Miller  regarded  it  himself, 
as  indirect  autobiography,  as  the  extraordinary  product  of  an 
extraordinary  life. 

"My  cradle,  "  he  wrote  in  a  lively  prose  account  of  his  life, 
"was  a  covered  wagon,  pointed  West."  In  this  wagon  he  was 
born,  he  tells  us,  as  it  was  crossing  the  border  line  of  Indiana 
and  Ohio,  in  the  year  1841,  and  he  was  named  Cincinnatus 
Hiner  Miller.  His  family  settled  on  the  Middle  Western  fron 
tier,  where  they  suffered  many  hardships  without  becoming 
dispirited.  Fascinated,  however,  by  accounts  of  the  Far  West, 
the  family  began,  in  March,  1852,  a  three-thousand-mile  jour 
ney  to  Oregon,  lasting  more  than  seven  months,  beset  by 
cholera,  tornadoes,  and  hostile  Indians.  Thus  as  a  boy  of  eleven 
Joaquin  Miller  came  to  know  that  terrible  and  alluring  westward 
journey  to  the  ultimate  frontier.  After  only  two  years  on  the 
Oregon  farm,  he  began  a  roving  life  of  adventure  that  led  him 
into  half  a  dozen  Indian  campaigns,  and  into  repeated  struggles 
with  mountain  flood  and  prairie  fire,  desert  thirst  and  buffalo 
stampede,  until  he  understood  the  life  of  that  region  outwardly, 
perhaps  inwardly  too,  as  nobody  else  in  American  literature. 
In  the  course  of  this  life  bristling  with  action  he  found  time  to 
write  verse  constantly,  publishing,  first,  Specimens  in  1868;  a 
year  later  Joaquin  et  al,  whence  his  rechristening  derisively  as 
"Joaquin  Miller";  and  another  year  later,  at  his  own  expense, 
in  London,  Pacific  Poems,  which  had  an  astonishing  reception 


Joaquin  Miller  55 

before  being  promptly  republished  as  Songs  of  the  Sierras.  Of 
the  many  volumes  that  followed,  none  fulfilled  the  promise  that 
readers  not  unnaturally  found  in  the  Songs.  He  wrote  dramas, 
too,  and  novels,  uniformly  without  success. 

Little  as  Joaquin  Miller  had  in  common  with  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites,  his  view  of  poetry — "To  me  a  poem  is  a  picture," 
he  stated  at  a  Rossetti  dinner — was  not  uncongenial  to  them. 
One  would  expect  his  work  to  be  concerned  with  action  first  of 
all,  but  it  is  not:  nearly  always  the  action,  even  in  the  osten 
sibly  narrative  poems,  is  subordinate  to  the  description.  He 
loved  the  West  as  he  loved  nothing  else,  and  his  best  work  is  a 
pictorial  treatment  of  it :  the  West  from  Central  America  to 
Alaska,  from  the  Great  Plains  to  the  coast,  its  grand  Sierras, — 
"white  stairs  of  heaven, ' ' — its  canyons,  its  great  rivers,  its  ocean, 
— "the  great  white,  braided,  bounding  sea, " — its  chaparral  and 
manzanita,  its  buffaloes  and  noble  horses,  its  stars  overhead 
"large  as  lilies."  Then  the  figures  that  peopled  this  vast 
setting — gold-miners,  Indians,  Mexicans,  and  the  romantic 
adventurers  who  are  commonly  his  heroes,  restless,  rebellious, 
and  misunderstood.  All  these  Miller  had  lived  among  till  he 
knew  them  as  well  as  he,  at  least,  could  know  anything,  and  in 
his  best  work  they  stand  forth  vividly.  His  poems  of  the  per 
sonal  life  are  forgotten,  but  the  power  of  Yo Semite  lives.  One 
reads  again  and  again,  with  renewed  pleasure,  such  poems  as 
Exodus  j ~or  Oregon  and  Westward  Ho!,  which  picture  the  heroic 
wanderings  of  the  pioneers  across  the  continent,  "A  mighty 
nation  moving  west,"  in  long  wagon  trains,  with  their  yoked 
steers,  shouting  drivers,  crashing  whips,  "blunt,  untutor'd 
men,  "  and  "brave  and  silent  women."  This  westward  move 
ment  is  the  theme  of  Miller's  most  impressive  poems,  from 
Columbus  who  sailed  "on  and  on"  (a  phrase  that  recurs  re 
peatedly  in  these  poems)  to  The  Last  Taschastas,  an  old  chief 
who  is  driven,  in  an  open  boat,  from  the  Pacific  shore,  as  the 
Indians  of  the  Atlantic  coast  had  been  driven  westward  cen 
turies  earlier.  More  than  anyone  else,  Joaquin  Miller  is  the 
poet  of  our  receding  frontier. 

In  narrative  poetry  he  could  use  to  the  full  his  immense 
energy,  which  is  his  chief  excellence.  He  was  not  a  man  of 
ideas;  he  reflected  objectively  less  perhaps  than  Byron,  and 
certainly  was  less  fond  of  introspection,  despite  his  later  years 


56  Later  Poets 

as  a  sort  of  hermit  on  the  heights  above  Oakland,  where  he 
built  the  cairn  upon  which  his  ashes  rest.  Primarily  he  was  a 
man  of  action  in  an  active  society.  If  there  was  something  of 
the  theatrical  about  him,  it  became  so  habitual,  as  C.  W. 
Stoddard  testifies,  as  to  be  natural.  Compared  with  Harte  at 
least,  who  exploited  the  West,  he  is  the  unfeigned  expression  of 
the  West.  If  he  had  not  much  culture,  he  fortunately  did  not 
pretend  to  have,  but  relied  upon  the  force  within  him.  His 
"rough,  broken  gallop,"  as  a  London  reviewer  described  his 
style,  has  a  charm  that  draws  the  reader  "on  and  on, "  disre 
garding  the  defects  of  his  quality — his  lack  of  proportion,  his 
crudity  in  music  and  in  taste.  In  the  end,  his  defects  may  be 
fatal,  so  far  as  purely  literary  values  are  concerned,  but  he  had 
the  good  fortune  to  record  the  Western  scene  in  poetry  as  no 
one  else  has  done,  an  achievement  that  will  not  soon  be  for 
gotten.  He  was  so  Western  as  almost  to  be  a  caricature  of  his 
section,  as  Emily  Dickinson  is  of  New  England. 

Edward  Rowland  Sill  ( 1841-87) ,  another  of  the  more  promi 
nent  Far  Western  poets,  born  in  the  same  year  with  Joaquin 
Miller,  wrote  quite  apart  from  the  literary  movements  of  both 
West  and  East,  though  his  artistic  ideals  had  some  resemblance 
to  those  of  the  New  York  school  and  his  temperament  was  that 
of  a  New  Englander.  Twenty-two  years  of  his  life  belong  to 
California,  but  he  was  born  in  Connecticut  and  died  in  Ohio. 
He  was  descended  from  old  New  England  families,  whose  heads 
were  mainly  ministers  on  his  mother's  side  and  physicians  on  his 
father's  side.  At  Yale  College  he  was  a  "dreamy,  impetuous, 
sensitive,  thoughtful  youth"  who  read  widely  aside  from  the 
curriculum,  who  impressed  his  comrades  with  his  attractive 
personality,  pure  character,  and  literary  talent,  and  who  con 
fronted  the  world  in  a  spirit  of  independent  inquiry.  ' '  He  must 
translate  human  experience  into  his  own  thought  and  language. ' ' 
He  published  Dream-Doomed,  Music,  and  other  poems  in  the 
college  literary  magazine,  and  was  the  class  poet  of  1861 ;  his 
Commencement  Poem,  included  in  his  collected  verse,  was  long 
regarded  at  Yale  as  the  best  class  poem  that  had  been  delivered 
there.  Graduating  at  twenty,  in  poor  health,  he  made  the  trip 
to  California  by  way  of  Cape  Horn.  For  half  a  dozen  years  he 
engaged  in  miscellaneous  occupations,  on  a  ranch,  in  a  post- 
office,  eventually  becoming  much  attached  to  this  alien  land. 


Sill  57 

In  order  to  study  theology  he  attended  the  Divinity  School  at 
Harvard;  but  he  quickly  gave  over  this  ambition  and  entered 
upon  a  still  briefer  career  as  journalist  in  New  York.  Then 
followed  his  school-teaching  years,  first  in  Ohio  and  afterwards 
in  California,  where  he  eventually  became  professor  of  English 
in  the  State  University.  This  post  he  held,  with  distinction  as 
a  teacher,  for  eight  years,  resigning  in  1882  mainly  on  account 
of  the  failing  health  that  dogged  his  steps  most  of  his  life.  In 
Cuyahoga  Falls,  Ohio,  he  continued  his  literary  pursuits  to  his 
death  at  the  age  of  forty-six,  in  1887. 

The  struggle  between  faith  and  doubt,  forced  upon  him  by 
the  spirit  of  the  age  even  before  he  was  a  man,  survived  all  the 
changing  scenes  of  his  life.  In  another  age  his  Puritan  inward 
ness  might  have  made  of  him  a  poet  of  faith,  if  not  a  minister 
of  the  Gospel.  But  he  never  attained  conviction,  was  always 
gently  questioning,  finding,  it  seems,  a  certain  twilight  gratifi 
cation  in  his  inconclusive  brooding.  This  habit  of  brooding  was 
alleviated  by  a  delicate  sense  of  humour,  which  removed  all 
suspicion  of  morbidity,  and  was  intensified  by  his  modesty. 
"You  should  see,  "  he  wrote  to  a  friend,  ''the  equanimity  with 
which  I  write  thing  after  thing — both  prose  and  verse — and 
stow  them  away,  never  sending  them  anywhere,  or  thinking  of 
printing  any  book  of  them,  at  present,  if  ever."  Most  of  his 
published  work,  indeed,  is  posthumous — to  use  his  word,  post- 
humorous — and  there  is  very  little  of  it,  only  a  volume  of  col 
lected  prose  and  a  volume  of  collected  poetry.  To  the  Atlantic 
he  sent  a  number  of  poems,  some  of  which  were  printed  under  a 
pen-name,  and  in  the  "Contributors'  Club"  his  prose  enjoyed 
complete  anonymity. 

Among  his  prose  studies  is  an  essay  on  Principles  of  Criti 
cism,  which  contains  a  statement  of  the  ideal  that  his  own 
poetry  followed : 

In  the  poem,  the  requirement  is  that  it  shall  be  full  of  lovely 
images,  that  it  shall  be  in  every  way  musical,  that  it  shall  bring 
about  us  troops  of  high  and  pure  associations, — the  very  words  so 
chosen  that  they  come  "trailing  clouds  of  glory"  in  their  suggestive- 
ness;  and  in  its  matter,  that  it  shall  bring  us  both  thought  and 
feeling,  for  whose  intermingling  the  musical  form  of  speech  alone  is 
fitted;  and  that,  coming  from  a  pure  and  rich  nature,  it  shall  leave  us 
purer  and  richer  than  it  found  us. 


58  Later  Poets 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  these  are  the  characteristics 
of  Sill's  poetry  at  its  best.  We  are  the  purer  and  richer 
for  reading  him;  he  rouses  life  in  the  dark,  disused  corners  of 
our  being  as  many  greater  poets  do  not.  In  The  Fool's  Prayer 
and  Opportunity,  his  two  best  known  poems,  he  attacks  us 
rather  too  directly,  in  the  New  England  didactic  strain.  Yet 
even  here  the  "moral,"  though  obvious,  exists  in  solution 
rather  than  in  a  crystallized  statement.  Nearly  always  his 
instinct  was  to  be  suggestive,  to  reach  the  reader's  emotion  by 
indirection,  by  surprise.  Always  clear,  he  is  also  quietly  subtle ; 
his  meaning  steals  upon  us  like  the  mood  of  a  peaceful  evening. 
His  diction  is  so  simple  that  an  unpracticed  reader  does  not 
suspect  how  delicately  the  poet  has  felt  the  "troops  of  high  and 
pure  associations"  that  accompany  his  plain  words.  So,  too, 
his  poems  are  musical,  frequently,  with  a  melody  that  is  un 
heard.  He  was  devoted  to  music  all  his  life,  playing  a  number 
of  instruments  with  skill  if  not  virtuosity.  He  wrote  about 
music  in  prose  and  verse.  In  nature,  sound  seemed  to  attract 
him  especially,  most  of  all  the  fitful  surf-music  of  the  wind, 
which  he  used  in  his  poems  repeatedly.  He  had,  too,  a  pictorial 
sense,  which  gave  him  a  command  of  the  "lovely  images"  that 
he  regarded  as  essential  in  verse.  Indeed,  he  had  all  the  quali 
ties  needed  for  the  highest  excellence  in  poetry  except  a  vigor 
ous  creative  imagination.  His  imagination  was  perhaps  mainly 
inarticulate,  for  though  he  wrote  all  his  life  he  seems  to  have 
lacked  the  intense  eagerness  or  the  steady,  resolute  progress  in 
creation  that  we  associate  with  the  great  artist.  His  over- 
modest  mind,  moreover,  together  with  his  unresolved  struggle 
of  faith  and  doubt,  encouraged  his  tendency  to  rest  in  the  un 
recorded  thought — to  read  widely,  to  feel  and  reflect  abun 
dantly,  rather  than  to  shape  his  conception  in  the  concrete 
poem. 

Among  his  many  poems  that  peer  within  to  the  shadowy 
mood  and  the  curious  speculation,  there  are  also  poems,  and  a 
larger  number  than  one  would  expect,  presenting  the  scene  of 
that  "purer  world"  of  the  Far  West  to  which  this  typical  New 
England  spirit  attached  itself  with  few  moments  of  regret,— 
the  soaring  pines  filled  with  the  sound  of  chanting  winds,  the 
surf  with  its  "curdling  rivulets  of  green,  "  the  city  of  San  Fran 
cisco  across  the  bay  like  a  sea-dragon  crawled  upon  the  shore, 


Middle  Western  Poets  59 

the  flowery  fields  now  white,  now  orange  or  sea-blue,  the  great 
redwood  forest  dreaming  in  silence  disturbed  only  by  the  sob 
of  a  distant  dove,  and  overhead,  by  night,  the  clear  stars  that 
he  loved  because  they  made  him,  as  he  said,  victor  over  time 
and  space.  In  these  poems  we  come  to  know  the  Western  scene, 
not  as  it  appeals  to  a  man  of  action  and  large,  blunt  emotion, 
but  as  it  rouses  the  feeling  of  a  temperament  subtly  aesthetic 
and  spiritual. 

Harte,  Miller,  and  Sill  were  born  far  from  the  Pacific  coast 
region  with  which  they  are  associated;  the  case  is  otherwise 
with  the  leading  poets  of  the  Middle  West, — the  Piatts,  Carle- 
ton,  Riley,  and  Moody.  "The  wedded  poets,"  John  James 
Piatt  (1835-1917),  born  in  Indiana,  and  Sarah  Morgan  Piatt 
(1836-1912),  born  in  Kentucky,  together  produced  a  large 
number  of  volumes  of  verse,  little  of  which  has  survived  its  age. 
They  used  conventional  forms,  and  wrote  with  care  and  skill; 
today,  however,  what  interest  they  still  have  depends  on  the 
themes  of  their  Western  poems,  such  as  The  Mower  in  Ohio  and 
Fires  in  Illinois.  With  the  Piatts  may  be  named  Madison 
Cawein  (1865-1915),  of  Kentucky,  notable  for  his  delicately 
fanciful  sense  of  the  camaraderie  of  nature.  Will  Carleton 
(1845-1912),  born  in  Michigan  and  brought  up  on  a  farm,  be 
came  a  journalist,  first  in  the  West  and  later  in  the  East,  and 
a  popular  reader  of  his  own  work.  In  1873  he  published 
Farm  Ballads,  a  group  of  crudely  sentimental  pieces  directed 
at  the  common  heart  of  humanity;  forty  thousand  copies  were 
sold  within  a  year  and  a  half.  Poems  like  Out  of  the  Old  House, 
Nancy,  and  Gone  with  a  Handsomer  Man  were  not  too  good  for 
anybody. 

Carleton's  success  foreshadows  the  still  greater  success  of 
another  journalist  and  public  reader  of  his  own  verse,  the 
' '  People's  Laureate, ' '  James  Whitcomb  Riley.  Of  Pennsylvania 
Dutch  and  Irish  stock,  the  latter  predominating,  he  was  born 
in  1849  in  the  country  town  of  Greenfield,  Indiana,  where  his 
father  had  attained  a  considerable  local  reputation  as  a  lawyer 
and  orator.  In  his  boyhood  Riley  was,  as  he  says,  "always 
ready  to  declaim  and  took  natively  to  anything  dramatic  or 
theatrical."  He  was  fond  of  poetry  before  he  could  read  it, 
carrying  a  copy  of  Quarles's  Divine  Emblems  about  with  him 
for  the  sake  of  its  "feel."  In  later  years  his  favourite  authors 


6o  Later  Poets 

were  Burns  in  poetry  and  Dickens  in  prose.  With  his  father  he 
often  went  to  the  courthouse,  where,  being  allowed  to  mingle 
freely  with  the  country  people,  he  came  to  know  the  dialect  and 
the  hearts  and  minds  of  the  people  who  were  in  after  years  to 
be  the  subject  of  his  poems.  For  a  time  he  devoted  himself  to 
music — the  banjo,  the  guitar,  the  violin,  the  drum. 

In  a  few  weeks  I  had  beat  myself  into  the  more  enviable  position 
of  snare  drummer.  Then  I  wanted  to  travel  with  a  circus,  and 
dangle  my  legs  before  admiring  thousands  over  the  back  seat  of 
a  Golden  Chariot.  In  a  dearth  of  comic  songs  for  the  banjo  and 
guitar,  I  had  written  two  or  three  myself,  and  the  idea  took  posses 
sion  of  me  that  I  might  be  a  clown,  introduced  as  a  character-song- 
man  and  the  composer  of  my  own  ballads. 

For  a  time,  too,  he  was  a  "house,  sign,  and  ornamental  pain 
ter,"  covering,  he  tells  us,  "all  the  barns  and  fences  in  the  State 
with  advertisements."  Persuaded  by  his  father,  he  read  law, 
only  to  find  himself  running  away  with  a  travelling  medicine  man, 
whose  company  was  composed,  he  says,  of  "good  straight  boys, 
jolly  chirping  vagabonds  like  myself.  Sometimes  I  assisted  the 
musical  olio  with  dialect  recitations  and  character  sketches 
from  the  back  step  of  the  wagon."  This  life  suited  him;  "I 
laughed  all  the  time." 

Returning  to  Greenfield,  he  entered  journalism,  and  began 
to  publish  in  various  papers  elsewhere.  Lean  and  uncertain 
years  followed,  till,  in  1877,  he  was  invited  to  take  a  place  on 
The  Indianapolis  Journal.  In  this  newspaper  he  printed  his 
dialect  poems  by  "Benjamin  F.  Johnson  of  Boone,  "  which  were 
welcomed  so  warmly  that  a  pamphlet  edition  was  sold  locally, 
with  the  title  The  Old  Swimmin1  Hole  and  'Leven  More  Poems 
(1883).  This  marks  the  beginning  of  his  widespread  success 
as  a  poet  of  the  people,  which  led  to  his  success  as  a  public 
reader  of  his  own  work.  Early  in  his  career  he  had  been  given 
valuable  encouragement  by  the  Eastern  people's  laureate, 
Longfellow,  and  in  1887,  when  he  appeared  before  a  New  York 
audience,  he  was  introduced  as  a  "true  poet "  by  the  author  of 
The  Biglow  Papers.  By  1912  schools  in  many  parts  of  the 
country  celebrated  "Riley  Day";  by  1915  he  was  honoured  by 
official  recognition,  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  suggesting 
that  one  of  his  poems  be  read  in  each  school-house  in  the  land. 


Riley  61 

When  he  died  in  the  year  following,  some  thirty-five  thousand 
people  are  said  to  have  passed  his  body  as  it  lay  in  state  under 
the  dome  of  the  Indiana  capitol.  The  impression  that  Riley 
made — and  still  makes — on  the  American  public  was  indeed 
extraordinary. 

It  is  to  be  accounted  for,  in  part,  by  his  personality.  His 
sunny,  gentle  nature  won  the  affection  of  those  who  met  him, 
and  he  had  a  group  of  loyal  friends  who  presented  him  to  the 
public  in  his  true  character.  But  in  the  main  his  popularity 
depends  on  the  excellence  and  the  limits  of  his  achievement. 
Essentially  sincere,  he  nevertheless  aimed  at  the  public  a  little 
too  deliberately.  "In  my  readings,  "  he  informs  us,  "I  had  an 
opportunity  to  study  and  find  out  for  myself  what  the  public 
wants,  and  afterwards  I  would  endeavour  to  use  the  knowledge 
gained  in  my  writing."  The  public  wants,  he  concluded, 
"simple  sentiments  that  come  from  the  heart"  and  not  in 
tellectual  excellence;  he  must  therefore  compose  poems,  he 
says  expressively,  "simply  heart  high." 

This  he  did.  Even  his  poems  in  conventional  English,  of 
which  he  wrote  not  a  few,  fail  to  rise  above  simple  sentiments ; 
there  is  scarcely  a  trace  of  thought  or  passion  in  even  so  pleas 
antly  sentimental  a  poem  as  An  Old  Sweetheart  of  Mine.  Nor, 
in  all  his  dialect  verse,  is  there  more  than  a  suggestion  here  and 
there  of  the  profundity  of  emotion — not  to  mention  profundity 
of  thought — of  the  great  poets.  He  wrote  of  the  everyday  life 
of  rustic  America,  of  "home"  and  "old  times," — magic  words 
with  him, — of  childhood,  of  simple  well-tried  pleasures  and 
sensibly  received  pains.  He  had  genuine  sympathy  for  ordi 
nary  folk,  for  animals,  for  nature.  In  his  presentation  of  charac 
ter, — Old  John  Clevenger,  Bee  Fessler,  Myle  Jones's  wife,  and 
the  rest  of  his  large  gallery, — he  showed  an  understanding  born 
of  sympathy  and  humour;  in  his  pictures  of  nature,  as  in  When 
the  Frost  is  on  the  Punkin,  responsiveness  and  distinct  vision, 
though  to  be  sure  he  fails  to  go  much  below  the  physical,  even 
the  air  being  ' '  so  appetizin ' '  merely.  His  ' '  philosophy ' '  is  that 
of  the  prudent  farmer;  it  is  made  up  of  the  most  patent  truisms, 
though  some  of  them  are  freshly  worded.  If  there  is  nowhere 
the  quality  of  The  Biglow  Papers,  still  less  of  Burns,  there  is  at 
least  a  wholesomeness  of  mood  and  mind,  uncommon  in  the 
restlessly  brooding  nineteenth  century,  that  offers  some  justi- 


62  Later  Poets 

fication  for  Riley's  enormous  vogue.  Though  there  are  capaci 
ties  in  the  American  mind  and  character  that  he  does  not  appeal 
to,  it  is  undeniable  that  he  appeals  urgently  to  the  normal 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  divine  average. 

This  is  not  true  of  the  last  of  the  greater  Western  poets  who 
are  no  longer  living — William  Vaughn  Moody.  His  small,  dis 
criminating  audience  regarded  him  as  a  poet  of  the  highest 
promise,  whose  early  death  was  a  public  loss.  Wholly  without 
the  sectional  point  of  view,  he  was  also  free  from  the  restric 
tions  in  vision  characteristic  of  certain  decades  in  American  life. 
He  was  neither  Middle  Western  nor  late  Victorian,  but  Ameri 
can  and  modern. 

Born,  like  Riley,  in  Indiana,  in  1869, — at  the  beginning  of 
an  era  of  industrial  development  and  clearer  national  con 
sciousness, — the  son  of  a  steamboat  captain,  with  English, 
French,  and  German  strains  in  his  blood,  and  educated  in  a 
New  England  college,  Moody  naturally  attained  a  larger  out 
look  on  life  than  most  of  the  poets  of  the  half  century.  After 
graduating  from  Harvard,  he  stayed  in  Cambridge  for  two 
years,  and  then,  in  1895,  returned  to  the  Middle  West  as  in 
structor  in  English  in  the  University  of  Chicago.  Although 
conscientious  as  a  teacher,  he  chafed  at  the  routine, — measuring 
time  in  terms  of  committee  meetings  and  quantities  of '  'themes," 
— and  at  his  environment,  finding  himself,  he  soon  reported, 
"fanatically  homesick  for  civilization,"  though  it  is  doubtful 
whether  he  could  have  found  a  congenial  post  as  a  teacher 
anywhere  in  the  "booming  "  America  of  his  day.  Fond  of  out 
door  activity,  he  found  relief  in  swimming,  bicycling,  and 
walking  in  this  country  and  abroad,  from  Arizona  to  Greece. 
He  was  a  vigorously  sensuous,  full-blooded,  ruddy-faced, 
youthful  poet,  intensely  curious  of  experience,  ardently  de 
voted  to  "It, "  his  term  for  "the  sum  total  of  all  that  is  beau 
tiful  and  worthy  of  loyalty  in  the  world" — chief  of  all,  poetry 
as  an  expression  of  life.  The  decisions  of  his  life  prove  the 
sincerity  of  this  devotion.  Achieving  a  sudden  success  through 
his  drama  The  Great  Divide, x  he  was  besieged  by  publishers  who 
offered  him  as  much  as  fifty  thousand  dollars  for  the  play  in  the 
form  of  a  novel;  but  he  did  not  believe  in  " novelization "  and 
preferred  to  follow  his  own  artistic  bent.  So,  too,  after  vir- 
1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xvm. 


Moody  63 

tually  severing  his  connection  with  the  University  of  Chicago 
in  1902,  when  offered  a  professorship  at  full  salary  if  he  would 
lecture  for  a  single  quarter  annually,  he  declined,  valuing  his 
independence  so  highly  that  he  accepted  hardship  with  it, 
rather  than  a  prosperous  subjection. 

Before  his  early  death  in  1910  he  had  made  his  way  to  a 
mode  of  expression  quite  his  own.  His  imitative  and  experi 
mental  period  extended  into  his  manhood  years;  it  took  this 
florid  Westerner,  for  example,  a  curiously  long  time  to  pass  from 
the  shadow  of  Rossetti,  and  his  debt  to  Browning  is  visible  in 
some  of  his  best  work.  Answering  a  friend's  criticism  of  Wild 
ing  Flower  (later  named  Heart's  Wild  Flower),  he  said : ' ' ' Paltry 
roof  is  paltry  I  freely  admit;  'wind-control'  and  'moon ward 
melodist'  are  rococo  as  hell."  '  The  remark  has  the  downright- 
ness,  with  a  trace  of  humour,  which  is  common  in  his  letters, 
and  which  helped  him  to  become  more  than  a  moonward 
melodist.  The  same  letter  contains  another  sentence  that 
suggests  at  once  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  his  work. 
' '  I  think  you  are  not  tolerant  enough  for  the  instinct  for  con 
quest  in  language,  the  attempt  to  push  out  its  boundaries,  to 
win  for  it  continually  some  new  swiftness,  some  rare  compres 
sion,  to  distill  from  it  a  more  opaline  drop."  This  eagerness 
of  expression  gives  vitality  to  all  of  Moody's  work;  but  it  also 
gives  it  a  sense  of  effort,  of  straining  to  obtain  an  intensity 
that  must,  after  all,  come  inevitably  and  easily. 

In  his  dramas  in  blank  verse,  this  characteristic  eagerness 
dominates  not  only  style  but  theme.  His  trilogy  of  poetic 
dramas  aims  to  do  no  less  than  to  reveal  the  need  of  God  to 
man  and  of  man  to  God.  The  Fire-Bringer  (1904)  is  concerned 
with  the  Prometheus  legend;  The  Masque  of  Judgment  (1900) 
with  the  eventual  meaning  to  God  of  his  decree  of  man's 
destruction;  and  The  Death  of  Eve  (1901),  unhappily  never 
completed,  was  to  show  the  impossibility  of  separation.  The 
plan  is  stupendous ;  there  is  perhaps  none  greater  in  literature ; 
but  certainly  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  problem  is 
soluble  at  all,  and  if  it  is,  whether  Moody  was  the  poet  needed 
for  so  lofty  an  enterprise.  It  is  true  that  the  fragmentary 
member  of  the  trilogy  is  finely  done,  in  a  manner  grandly  simple 
despite  the  complex  and  murky  emotional  states  evolved,  and 
that  the  conception  of  Eve  as  the  instrument  of  reconciliation 


64  Later  Poets 

between  man  and  God  is  carried  out  with  impressive  power. 
Still,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  other  dramas  are  vague  and 
inchoate,  lacking  the  lucidity  and  impact  of  the  true  classic, 
and  that,  therefore,  even  if  Moody  might  have  improved  the 
trilogy  later,  his  actual  accomplishment  is,  at  best,  splendidly 
tentative  and  grandiose. 

Possibly  the  lyrics  contained  in  these  dramas  are  the  best 
part  of  them;  and  it  is  in  the  lyric,  unquestionably,  that  Moody 
did  his  most  important  work.  Dainty  lyricism  was  beyond  his 
sober  touch;  and  the  commonplace  theme  never  appealed  to 
him,  any  more  than  the  commonplace  mode  of  expression. 
Given  a  substantial  conception,  however,  he  could  use  his  in 
tellectual  power  and  his  large  emotional  reservoirs  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  repel  the  plain  man  and  delight  the  lover,  say,  of 
Shelley  and  Browning.  Such  poems  as  Gloucester  Moors,  with 
its  vivid  sense  of  the  earth  sailing  through  space  like  a  gallant 
ship  with  a  dubious  crew  (a  conception  previously  used  more 
than  once  by  Sill),  and  The  Menagerie,  with  its  grimly  humor 
ous  description  of  the  evolutionary  ancestors  of  "A  little  man 
in  trousers,  slightly  jagged, "  are  of  a  kind  unmatched  in  Ameri 
can  poetry.  They  have  the  sophisticated,  questioning  spirit  of 
the  new  century.  Closer  to  tradition  are  his  patriotic  poems, 
the  Ode  in  Time  of  Hesitation,  written  in  1900  when  the  relation 
of  the  United  States  to  the  former  Spanish  colonies  was  in 
question,  and  the  lines  On  a  Soldier  Fallen  in  the  Philippines, 
with  its  desolating  sense  of  a  dishonourable  cause.  These 
poems  appeared  when  the  public  was  warmly  debating. the 
questions  they  deal  with.  To  that  fact,  and  to  their  beauty  and 
assured  tone,  is  owing  the  thrill  that  welcomed  them,  as  if  a 
new  Lowell  had  come  to  voice  our  conscience  in  memorable 
verse.  But  they  form  a  tiny  group;  and  indeed  the  total  bulk 
of  Moody's  lyrics  is  inconsiderable.  What  he  might  have  done 
had  he  not  been  cut  off  at  the  height  of  his  powers  it  is  vain 
to  wonder. 

Moody  brings  us  to  the  new  century,  in  years  and  in  spirit. 
In  his  work  is  a  turbulence  unknown  in  the  facile  and  edifying 
poetry  of  our  "albuminous"  Victorian  era,  a  passionate  dis 
content  with  old  forms,  old  themes,  old  thoughts.  In  the 
twentieth  century  our  poets  have  more  and  more  believed 
that,  if  their  work  was  to  be  vital,  they  must  return  to 


The  New  Poetry  65 

the  laboratory  of  poetry  to  study  afresh  the  raw  materi 
als  and  to  seek  a  new  formula  in  accord  with  the  time  spirit. 
In  this  effort  they  have  naturally  derived  more  help  from 
Whitman,  a  poet  in  posse,  than  from  anyone  else.  To  him, 
and  of  course  to  others,  they  owe  their  usual  form,  free  verse, 
and  their  point  of  view,  that  of  an  exaggerated  individualism, 
often  combined  with  humanitarian  emotion  and  an  intimate 
feeling  for  nature.  But  though  their  intellectual  outlook  is 
still  in  the  main  that  of  Whitman's  century,  their  poetic  energy 
is  so  fresh  and  vital  that  it  may  reasonably  be  expected  to 
prelude  a  new  vision  of  life  adequate  to  the  new  era.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  a  conventional  public,  the  new  poetry  has 
been  bizarre  and  not  always  sincere;  but  the  new  poets  them 
selves — to  mention  only  Edwin  Arlington  Robinson,  Robert 
Frost,  Vachel  Lindsay,  Edgar  Lee  Masters,  Carl  Sandburg, 
and  Amy  Lowell,  of  the  many  poets  who  may  be  studied  in 
W.  S.  Braithwaite's  annual  anthologies — have  for  the  most 
part  honestly  sought  to  see  life  more  truly  than  it  has  been 
envisaged  by  the  poets  of  the  past,  and  to  reveal  their  findings 
to  other  men  by  means  of  a  form  entirely  dictated  by  the  sub 
stance — the  very  substance  externalized.  Recent  years  have 
brought  forth  an  extraordinary  number  of  poets,  a  great  mass 
of  verse,  not  a  few  remarkable  poems,  and  the  promise  of  still 
higher  achievement  when  the  new  poetry  has  found  its  intel 
lectual  and  artistic  standards  through  some  kind  of  genuine 
discipline. 

Vol.  in— 5 


CHAPTER  XI 

The   Later   Novel:      Howells 

THE  romance  of  the  school  of  Cooper  was  not  only  falling 
into  disuse  among  most  writers  of  capacity  at  the  time 
of  his  death  but  was  rapidly  descending  into  the  hands 
of  fertile  hacks  who  for  fifty  years  were  to  hold  an  immense 
audience  without  more  than  barely  deserving  a  history.  It 
was  in  that  very  year  (1851)  that  Robert  Bonner  bought  the 
New  York  Ledger  and  began  to  make  it  the  congenial  home  of 
a  sensationalism  which,  hitherto  most  nearly  anticipated  by 
such  a  romancer  as  Joseph  Holt  Ingraham,  reached  unsurpass 
able  dimensions  with  the  prolific  Sylvanus  Cobb,  Jr.  From 
the  Ledger  no  step  in  advance  had  to  be  taken  by  the  in 
ventors  of  the  "dime  novel, "  which  was  started  upon  its  long 
career  by  the  publishing  firm  of  Beadle  and  Adams  of  New 
York  in  i860.1  Edward  S.  Ellis's  Seth  Jones  or  The  Captive 
of  the  Frontier  (1860),  one  of  the  earliest  of  the  sort,  its  hero 
formerly  a  scout  under  Ethan  Allen  but  now  adventuring  in 
Western  New  York,  sold  over  600,000  copies  in  half  a  dozen 
languages.  Though  no  other  single  dime  novel  was  perhaps 
ever  so  popular,  the  type  prospered,  depending  almost  exclu 
sively  upon  native  authors  and  native  material :  first  the  old 
frontier  of  Cooper  and  then  the  trans-Mississippi  region,  with 
its  Indians,  its  Mexicans,  its  bandits,  its  troopers,  and  above 
all,  its  cowboys,  among  whom  "Buffalo  Bill"  (Col.  William 
F.  Cody)  achieved  a  primacy  much  like  that  of  Daniel 
Boone  among  the  older  order  of  scouts.  Cheap,  conven 
tional,  hasty, — Albert  W.  Aiken  Jong  averaged  one  such 
novel  a  week,  and  Col.  [IngrarnJPrentiss  produced  in  all  over 

1  Charles  M.  Harvey,   The  Dime  Novel  in  American  Life,  Atlantic,  July, 
1907. 

66 


John  Esten  Cooke  67 

six  hundred, — they  were  exciting,  innocent  enough,  and  scrupu 
lously  devoted  to  the  doctrines  of  poetic  justice,  but  they 
lacked  all  distinction,  and  Frank  Norris  could  justly  grieve 
that  the  epic  days  of  Western  settlement  found  only  such 
tawdry  Homers.  In  the  fourth  quarter  of  the  century  the 
detective  story  rivalled  the  frontier  tale;  after  1900,  both, 
though  reduced  to  the  price  of  five  cents  apiece,  gave  way 
before  the  still  more  exciting  and  easily  comprehended  moving 
picture. 

One  successor  of  Cooper,  however,  upheld  for  a  time  the 
dignity  of  old-fashioned  romance.  John  Esten  Cooke  (i  830-86) , 
born  in  the  Valley  of  Virginia  and  brought  up  in  Richmond, 
cherished  a  passion  as  intense  as  Simms's  for  his  native  state 
and  deliberately  set  out  to  celebrate  its  past  and  its  beauty. 
Leather  Stocking  and  Silk  (1854)  and  The  Last  of  the  Foresters 
(1856),  both  narratives  of  life  in  the  Valley,  recall  Cooper  by 
more  than  their  titles;  but  in  The  Youth  of  Jefferson  (1854), 
still  more  in  The  Virginia  Comedians  (1854)  and  its  sequel 
Henry  St.  John,  Gentleman  (1859),  Cooke  seems  as  completely 
Virginian  as  Beverley  Tucker1  before  him,  though  less  stately 
in  his  tread.  All  three  of  these  novels  have  their  scenes  laid  in 
Williamsburg,  the  old  capital  of  the  Dominion ;  they  reproduce 
a  society  strangely  made  up  of  luxury,  daintiness,  elegance, 
penury,  ugliness,  brutality.  At  times  the  dialogue  of  Cooke's 
impetuous  cavaliers  and  merry  girls  nearly  catches  the  flavour  of 
the  Forest  of  Arden,  but  there  is  generally  something  stilted  in 
their  speech  or  behaviour  that  spoils  the  gay  illusion.  Never 
theless,  The  Virginia  Comedians  may  justly  be  called  the  best 
Virginia  novel  of  the  old  regime,  unless  possibly  Swallow  Barn2 
should  be  excepted,  for  reality  as  well  as  for  colour  and  spirit. 
During  the  Civil  War  Cooke  fought,  as  captain  of  cavalry, 
under  Stuart,  and  had  experiences  which  he  afterwards  turned 
to  use  in  a  series  of  Confederate  romances,  most  notable  of 
which  is  Surry  of  Eagle's  Nest  (1866).  But  in  this  and  in  the 
related  tales  Hilt  to  Hilt  (1869)  andMohun  (1869),  as  well  as  in 
numerous  later  novels,  he  continued  to  practice  an  old  manner 
which  grew  steadily  more  archaic  as  the  realists  gained  ground. 
Towards  the  end  of  his  life  he  participated,  without  changing 
his  habits,  in  the  revival  of  the  historical  romance  which  began 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap,  vn,  2  Ibid. 


68  The  Later  Novel 

in  the  eighties;  but  his  pleasant,  plaintive  My  Lady  Poka- 
hontas  (1885)  cannot  really  compare  for  charm  with  his  Vir 
ginia  A  History  of  the  People  (1883),  a  high-minded  and 
fascinating  work.  Cooke  was  the  last  of  Cooper's  school ;  but 
he  was  also  the  first  of  those  who  contributed  to  the  poetic  ideal 
ization  of  the  antebellum  South  which  has  been  one  of  the  most 
prominent  aspects  of  American  fiction  since  1865. 

Less  close  to  Cooper  was  another  novelist  who  fought  in  the 
Civil  War,  and  gave  his  life  in  one  of  the  earliest  battles,  Theo 
dore  Winthrop  (1828-61).  Of  a  stock  as  eminent  in  New  Eng 
land  and  New  York  as  Cooke's  in  Virginia,  Winthrop  had 
a  more  cosmopolitan  upbringing  than  Cooke:  after  Yale  he 
travelled  in  Europe,  in  the  American  tropics,  in  California  while 
the  gold  fever  was  still  new,  and  in  the  North-west.  His  work 
at  first  found  so  delayed  a  favour  with  publishers  that  his  books 
were  all  posthumous — Cecil  Dreeme  (1861),  John  Brent  (1862), 
Edwin  Brothertoft  (1862),  The  Canoe  and  the  Saddle  (1863), 
and  Life  in  the  Open  Air  and  Other  Papers  (I863).1  Time 
might,  it  is  urged,  have  made  Winthrop  the  legitimate  suc 
cessor  of  Hawthorne,  but  in  fact  he  progressed  little  beyond 
the  qualities  of  Brockden  Brown,  whom  he  considerably 
resembles  in  his  strenuous  nativism,  his  melodramatic  plots, 
his  abnormal  characters,  his  command  over  the  mysterious, 
and  his  breathless  style.  Of  the  three  novels  John  Brent  is 
easily  the  most  interesting  by  reason  of  its  vigorous  narrative 
of  adventures  in  the  Far  West,  at  that  time  a  region  still 
barely  touched  by  fiction,  and  its  magnificent  hero,  the  black 
horse  Don  Fulano.  That  Winthrop 's  real  talent  looked 
forward  in  this  direction  rather  than  backward  to  Hawthorne 
appears  still  more  clearly  from  The  Canoe  and  the  Saddle,  a 
fresh,  vivid,  amusing,  and  truthful  record  of  his  own  journey 
across  the  Cascade  Mountains,  and  an  established  classic  of 
the  North-west.  His  death,  however,  prevented  further 
achievement,  and  the  Pacific  Coast  had  to  wait  for  Mark 
Twain2  and  Bret  Harte.3 

What  chiefly  characterized  American  fiction  of  the  decade 
1850-60,  leaving  out  of  account  romancers  like  Hawthorne, 

1  Mr.  Waddy's  Return,  written  earliest  of  all,  was  first  published  in  1904, 
edited  and  condensed  by  Burton  Egbert  Stevenson. 

2  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vin.  3  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 


Domestic-Sentimental  Romances          69 

Cooke,  and  Winthrop,  was  domestic  sentimentalism,  which 
for  a  time  attained  a  hearing  rare  in  literary  history,  and 
produced  one  novel  of  enormous  influence  and  reputation.  In 
that  decade  flowered  Mrs.  E.  D.  E.  N.  South  worth,  Mary 
Jane  Holmes,  and  Augusta  Jane  Evans  (Wilson),  all  more  or 
less  in  the  Charlotte  Temple  tradition;  Anne  and  Susan  Warner1 
and  Maria  S.  Cummins,  pious  historians  of  precocious  young 
girls;  and — not  so  far  above  them — the  almost  equally  tender 
and  tearful  Donald  Grant  Mitchell  ("Ik  Marvel")2  and 
George  William  Curtis, 3  young  men  who,  however,  afterwards 
took  themselves  to  sterner  tasks.  Professor  Ingraham  gave 
up  his  blood-and-thunder,  became  a  clergyman,  and  wrote  the 
long-popular  biblical  romance  The  Prince  of  the  House  of  David 
(1855) .  Indeed,  the  decade  was  eminently  clerical,  and  though 
Mitchell  and  Curtis  might  recall  Irving  and  Thackeray  re 
spectively,  they  were  less  representative  than  the  most  effective 
writer  of  the  whole  movement,  who  was  daughter,  sister,  wife, 
and  mother  of  clergymen. 

Harriet  Beecher,  born  in  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  14  June, 
1811,  passed  her  childhood  and  girlhood,  indeed  practically 
her  entire  life,  in  an  atmosphere  of  piety  which,  much  as  she 
eventually  lost  of  its  original  Calvin istic  rigour,  not  only  indoc 
trinated  her  with  orthodox  opinions  but  furnished  her  with  an 
intensely  evangelical  point  of  view  and  a  sort  of  Scriptural 
eloquence.  Her  youth  was  spent  in  a  more  diversified  world 
than  might  be  thought:  from  her  mother's  people,  who  were 
emphatically  High  Church  and,  in  spite  of  the  Revolution, 
some  of  them  still  Tory  at  heart,  she  learned  a  faith  and  ritual 
less  austere  than  that  of  her  father,  Lyman  Beecher4;  she  had 
good  teaching  at  the  Litchfield  Academy,  especially  in  com 
position;  like  all  her  family,  she  was  highly  susceptible  to 
external  nature  and  passionately  acquainted  with  the  lovely 
Litchfield  hills ;  she  read  very  widely,  and  not  only  theology,  of 
which  she  read  too  much  for  her  happiness,  but  the  accepted 
secular  authors  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as  well  as  Burns 
and  Byron  and  Scott.  At  the  same  time,  she  justified  her 
Beecher  lineage  by  her  ready  adaptation  to  the  actual  condi 
tions  under  which  she  lived  during  Lyman  Beecher 's  pastorates 

'  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vii.  »  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xm.  '  Ibid. 

<  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xxn. 


70  The  Later  Novel 

in  Litchfield  and  Boston,  and  during  her  own  career  as  pupil 
and  then  teacher  in  the  school  conducted  at  Hartford  by  her 
strong  but  morbid  sister  Catherine.  Although  Harriet  Beecher 
was  still  a  thorough  child  of  New  England  when  she  went,  in 
1832,  to  live  in  Cincinnati,  to  which  her  father  had  been  called 
as  president  of  the  Lane  Theological  Seminary,  and  although 
her  earliest  sketches  and  tales,  collected  in  a  volume  called 
The  Mayflower  (1843),  deal  largely  with  memories  of  her  old 
home  set  down  with  an  exile's  affection,  she  grew  rapidly  in 
knowledge  and  experience.  Married  in  1836  to  Professor 
Calvin  E.  Stowe  of  the  Seminary,  mother  by  1850  of  seven 
children,  she  returned  in  that  year  to  Brunswick,  Maine, 
where  Professor  Stowe  had  accepted  a  position  in  Bowdoin 
College.  There,  deeply  stirred  by  the  passing  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law,  she  began  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin;  or,  Life  among  the 
Lowly,  which  ran  as  a  serial  in  The  National  Era  of  Washington 
from  June,  1851,  to  April,  1852,  and  then,  on  its  appearance 
in  two  volumes  in  March,  1852,  met  with  a  popular  reception 
never  before  or  since  accorded  to  a  novel.  Its  sales  went  to  the 
millions.  Over  five  hundred  thousand  Englishwomen  signed 
an  address  of  thanks  to  the  author ;  Scotland  raised  a  thousand 
pounds  by  a  penny  offering  among  its  poorest  people  to  help 
free  the  slaves;  in  France  and  Germany  the  book  was  every 
where  read  and  discussed;  while  there  were  Russians  who 
emancipated  their  serfs  out  of  the  pity  which  the  tale  aroused. 
In  the  United  States,  thanks  in  part  to  the  stage, I  which  pro 
duced  a  version  as  early  as  September,  1852,  the  piece  belongs 
not  only  to  literature  but  to  folklore. 

That  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  stands  higher  in  the  history  of 
reform  than  in  the  history  of  the  art  of  fiction  no  one  needs 
to  say  again.  Dickens,  Kingsley,  and  Mrs.  Gaskell  had 
already  set  the  novel  to  humanitarian  tunes,  and  Mrs.  Stowe 
did  not  have  to  invent  a  type.  She  had,  however,  no  particu 
lar  foreign  master,  not  even  Scott,  all  of  whose  historical 
romances  she  had  been  reading  just  before  she  began  Uncle 
Tom.  Instead  she  adhered  to  the  native  tradition,  which  went 
back  to  the  eighteenth  century,  of  sentimental,  pious,  instruct 
ive  narratives  written  by  women  chiefly  for  women.  Leave 
out  the  merely  domestic  elements  of  the  book — slave  families 

1  See  above,  Vol.  I,  p.  227. 


"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin "  7i 

broken  up  by  sale,  ailing  and  dying  children,  negro  women  at 
the  mercy  of  their  masters,  white  households  which  at  the  best 
are  slovenly  and  extravagant  by  reason  of  irresponsible  ser 
vants — and  little  remains.  To  understand  why  the  story 
touched  the  world  so  deeply  it  is  necessary  to  understand  how 
tense  the  struggle  over  slavery  had  grown,  how  thickly  charged 
was  the  moral  atmosphere  awaiting  a  fatal  spark.  But  the 
mere  fact  of  an  audience  already  prepared  will  not  explain 
the  mystery  of  a  work  which  shook  a  powerful  institution  and 
which,  for  all  its  defects  of  taste  and  style  and  construction, 
still  has  amazing  power.  Richard  Hildreth's1  The  Slave;  or 
Memoirs  of  Archy  Moore  (1836)  and  Mrs.  M.  V.  Victor's  once 
popular  "dime  novel"  Maum  Guinea;  or,  Christmas  among  the 
Slaves  (1861)  no  longer  move.  They  both  lack  the  ringing 
voice,  the  swiftness,  the  fullness,  the  humour,  the  authentic 
passion  of  the  greater  book. 

It  has  often  been  pointed  out  that  Mrs.  Stowe  did  not 
mean  to  be  sectional,  that  she  deliberately  made  her  chief 
villain  a  New  Englander,  and  that  she  expected  to  be  blamed 
less  by  the  South  than  by  the  North,  which  she  thought 
peculiarly  guilty  because  it  tolerated  slavery  without  the 
excuse  either  of  habit  or  of  interest.  Bitterly  attacked  by 
Southerners  of  all  sorts,  however,  she  defended  herself  with  A 
Key  to  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin;  Presenting  the  Original  Facts  and 
Documents  upon  which  the  Story  is  Founded  (1853),  and  then, 
after  a  triumphant  visit  to  Europe  and  a  removal  to  Andover, 
essayed  another  novel  to  illustrate  the  evil  effects  of  slavery 
especially  upon  the  whites.  Dred;  A  Tale  of  the  Great  Dismal 
Swamp  (i856)2  has  had  its  critical  partisans,  but  posterity 
has  not  sustained  them.  Grave  faults  of  construction,  slight 
knowledge  of  the  scene  (North  Carolina),  a  less  simple  and 
compact  story  than  in  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  and  a  larger  share  of 
disquisition, — these  weigh  the  book  down,  and  most  readers 
carry  away  only  fragmentary  memories,  of  Dred's  thunderous 
eloquence,  of  Tom  Gordon's  shameless  abuse  of  his  power  as 
master,  and  of  Old  Tiff's  grotesque  and  beautiful  fidelity. 

After  Dred  Mrs.  Stowe  wrote  no  more  anti-slavery  novels, 
although  during  the  Civil  War  she  sent  to  the  women  of  Eng- 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xvn. 

2  Also  known  as  Nina  Gordon  from  the  English  title. 


72  The  Later  Novel 

land  an  open  letter  reminding  them  that  they,  so  many  of  whom 
now  sympathized  with  the  defenders  of  slavery,  had  less  than 
ten  years  ago  hailed  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  as  a  mighty  stroke  for 
justice  and  freedom.  A  considerable  part  of  her  later  life  (she 
died  i  July,  1896)  was  spent  in  Florida,  where  she  had  taken  a 
plantation  on  the  St.  John's  River  for  the  double  purpose  of 
establishing  there  as  a  planter  one  of  her  sons  who  had  been 
wounded  at  Gettysburg  and  of  assisting  the  freedmen,  about 
whom  and  their  relation  to  the  former  masters  she  had  more 
enlightened  views  than  were  then  generally  current  in  the  North. 
Now  an  international  figure,  she  let  her  pen  respond  too  f  acilely 
to  the  many  demands  made  upon  it :  she  wrote  numerous  di 
dactic  and  religious  essays  and  tales,  particularly  attentive  to 
the  follies  of  fashionable  New  York  society,  in  which  she  had 
had  little  experience;  she  was  chosen  by  Lady  Byron  to  publish 
the  most  serious  charges  ever  brought  against  the  poet.  In 
another  department  of  her  work,  however,  Mrs.  Stowe  stood 
on  surer  ground,  and  her  novels  of  New  England  life — particu 
larly  The  Minister's  Wooing  (1859),  The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island 
(1862),  Oldtown  Folks  (1869),  Poganuc  People  (1878) — cannot 
go  unmentioned. 

Weak  in  structure  and  sentimental  she  remained.  Her 
heroines  wrestle  with  problems  of  conscience  happily  alien  to 
all  but  a  few  New  England  and  Nonconformist  British  bosoms ; 
her  bold  seducers,  like  Ellery  Davenport  in  Oldtown  Folks  and 
Aaron  Burr  in  The  Minister's  Wooing,  are  villains  to  frighten 
schoolgirls;  she  writes  always  as  from  the  pulpit,  or  at  least  the 
parsonage.  But  where  no  abstract  idea  governs  her  she  can  be 
direct,  accurate,  and  convincing.  The  earlier  chapters  of  The 
Pearl  of  Orr's  Island  must  be  counted,  as  Whittier  thought, 
among  the  purest,  truest  idyls  of  New  England.  It  is  harder 
now  to  agree  with  Lowell  in  placing  The  Minister's  Wooing 
first  among  her  novels,  and  yet  no  other  imaginative  treatment 
so  well  sets  forth  the  strange,  dusky  old  Puritan  world  of  the 
later  eighteenth  century,  when  Newport  was  the  centre  at 
once  of  Hopkinsian  divinity1  and  the  African  slave  trade. 
Mrs.  Stowe  wisely  did  not  put  on  the  airs  of  an  historical 
romancer  but  wrote  like  a  contemporary  of  the  earlier  New 
port  with  an  added  flavour  from  her  own  youthful  recollections. 

'  See  Book  II,  Chap.  XXH. 


Mrs.  Stowe's  New  England  73 

This  flavour  was  indispensable  to  her.  When  her  memory  of 
the  New  England  she  had  known  in  her  girlhood  and  had 
loved  so  truly  that  Cotton  Mather's  Magnolia  had  seemed 
"wonderful  stories  .  .  .  that  made  me  feel  the  very  ground  I 
trod  on  to  be  consecrated  by  some  special  dealing  of  God's  pro 
vidence," — when  this  memory  worked  freely  and  humorously 
upon  materials  which  it  was  enough  merely  to  remember  and 
set  down,  she  was  at  her  later  best.  These  conditions  she 
most  fully  realized  in  Poganuc  People,  crisp,  sweet,  spare  (for 
her),  never  quite  sufficiently  praised,  and  in  Oldtown  Folks, 
like  the  other  a  series  of  sketches  rather  than  a  novel,  but — 
perhaps  all  the  more  because  of  that — still  outstanding,  for 
fidelity  and  point,  among  the  innumerable  stories  dealing  with 
New  England. 

Adaptable  to  literary  as  to  other  circumstances,  Mrs. 
Stowe  had  actually  in  Oldtown  Folks  fallen  in  with  the 
imperious  current  proceeding  from  the  example  of  Bret  Harte, 
whose  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  stands  at  the  very  headwaters 
of  American  "local  colour"  fiction  and  largely  gave  it  its 
direction.  Elsewhere  in  this  history  that  movement,  so  far 
as  it  concerns  the  short  story,  its  chief  form,  has  been  traced1; 
in  the  novel  a  similar  fondness  for  local  manners  and  types 
appeared,  but  not  so  prompt  a  revolution  in  method,  for  the 
good  reason  that  most  writers  who  followed  Bret  Harte  fol 
lowed  him  in  the  dimensions  of  their  work  as  well  as  in  its  sub 
jects,  and  left  the  novel  standing  for  a  few  years  a  little  out 
of  the  central  channel  of  imaginative  production.  Domestic 
sentimentalism,  of  course,  did  not  noticeably  abate,  carried 
on  with  large  popular  success  by  Josiah  Gilbert  Holland 
(1819-81)  of  Massachusetts  and  Edward  Pay  son  Roe  (1838- 
88)  of  New  York  until  nearly  the  end  of  the  century,  when 
others  took  up  the  useful  burden.  Both  Holland  and  Roe 
were  clergymen,  a  sign  that  the  old  suspicion  of  the  novel  was 
nearly  dead,  even  among  those  petty  sects  and  sectarians  that 
so  long  feared  the  effects  of  it.  Holland,  whose  first  novel  had 
appeared  in  1857,  was  popular  moralist  and  poet2  as  well  as 
novelist  and  first  editor  of  Scribner's  Magazine  (founded  1870) ; 
but  Roe  contented  himself  with  fiction.  Chaplain  of  cavalry 
and  of  one  of  the  Federal  hospitals  during  the  Civil  War,  he 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi.  *  See  Book  III,  Chap.  x. 


74  The  Later  Novel 

later  gave  up  the  ministry  in  the  firm  conviction  that  he  could 
reach  thousands  with  novels  and  only  hundreds  with  his  voice. 
His  simple  formula  included:  first,  some  topical  material, 
historical  event,  or  current  issue ;  second,  characters  and  inci 
dents  selected  directly  from  his  personal  observation  or  from 
newspapers;  third,  an  abundance  of  "nature"  descriptions 
with  much  praise  of  the  rural  virtues;  and  fourth,  plots  con 
cerned  almost  invariably,  and  not  very  deviously,  with  the 
simultaneous  pursuit  of  wives,  fortunes,  and  salvation.  Bar 
riers  Burned  Away  (1872),  The  Opening  of  a  Chestnut  Burr 
(1874),  and  Without  a  Home  (1881)  are  said  to  have  been  his 
most  widely  read  books. 

The  greatest,  however,  and  practically  the  ultimate  victory 
over  village  opposition  to  the  novel  was  won  by  Ben-Hur  A 
Tale  of  the  Christ  (1880),  a  book  of  larger  pretension  and 
broader  scope  than  any  of  Roe's  or  Holland's  modest  nar 
ratives,  the  only  American  novel,  indeed,  which  can  be  compared 
with  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  as  a  true  folk  possession. I  Its  author, 
Gen.  Lew  Wallace  (1827-1905),  an  Indiana  lawyer,  a  soldier  in 
both  the  Mexican  and  the  Civil  War,  had  already  published 
The  Fair  God  (1873),  an  elaborate  romance  of  the  conquest  of 
Mexico.  A  chance  conversation  with  the  notorious  popular 
skeptic  Col.  Robert  G.  Ingersoll  led  Wallace  to  researches  into 
the  character  and  doctrines  of  Jesus  which  not  only  convinced 
him  but  bore  further  fruit  in  a  tale  which  thousands  have  read 
who  have  read  no  other  novel  except  perhaps  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  and  have  hardly  thought  of  either  as  a  novel  at  all,  and 
through  which  still  more  thousands  know  the  geography,  eth 
nology,  and  customs  of  first-century  Judaea  and  Antioch  as 
through  no  other  source.  Without  doubt  the  outstanding 
element  in  the  story  is  the  revenge  of  Ben-Hur  upon  his  false 
friend  Messala,  a  revenge  which  takes  the  Prince  of  Jerusalem 
through  the  galleys  and  the  palaestra  and  which  leaves  Mes 
sala,  after  the  thrilling  episode  of  the  chariot  race,  crippled  and 
stripped  of  his  fortune.  And  yet,  following  even  such  pagan 
deeds,  Ben-Hur's  discovery  that  he  cannot  serve  the  Messiah 
with  the  sword  does  not  quite  seem  an  anticlimax,  though 
the  conclusion,  dealing  with  the  Passion,  like  the  introductory 

1  An  edition  numbering  a  million  copies  was  ordered  by  a  Chicago  mail  order 
house  in  1913  and  promptly  distributed. 


Edward  Eggleston  75 

chapters  on  the  meeting  of  the  Magi,  falls  somewhat  below  the 
level  of  the  revenge  theme  in  energy  and  simplicity.  Compared 
with  other  romances  of  this  sort,  however,  with  William  Ware's1 
or  Ingraham's,  for  instance,  Ben-Hur  easily  passes  them  all, 
by  a  vitality  which  has  a  touch  of  genius.  It  passes,  too, 
Wallace's  third  romance,  written  while  he  was  ambassador  to 
Turkey,  The  Prince  of  India  or  Why  Constantinople  Fell  (1893), 
a  long,  dull  romance  with  the  Wandering  Jew  as  principal  figure. 
Edward  Eggleston  (1837-1902),  a  clergyman  like  Holland 
and  Roe,  and  like  General  Wallace  a  native  of  Indiana,  though 
nourished  in  the  school  which  made  the  domestic-sentimental- 
pious  romance  the  dominant  type  of  fiction  between  1850  and 
1870,  must  yet  be  considered  the  pioneer  figure  in  the  new 
realism  which  succeeded  it  in  the  eighties.  As  a  Methodist  on 
the  frontier  he  had  been  brought  up,  though  of  cultivated 
Virginia  stock,  to  think  novels  and  all  such  works  of  the 
imagination  evil  things,  but  his  diversified  experience  as  an 
itinerant  preacher,  or  "circuit  rider,"  and  as  editor  and 
journalist,  his  wholesome  religion,  and  the  studious  habit 
which  eventually  made  him  a  sound  historical  scholar,  took 
him  out  of  these  narrow  channels  of  opinion.  It  is  highly 
significant  that  whereas  Mrs.  Stowe  or  her  followers  would 
have  thought  of  themselves  as  writing  fiction  considerably  for 
the  sake  of  its  moral  consequences,  Eggleston,  having  read 
Taine's  Art  in  the  Netherlands,2  undertook  to  portray  the 
life  of  southern  Indiana  in  the  faithful,  undoctrinaire  spirit 
of  a  Dutch  painter.  His  first  novel,  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster 
(1871),  remains  his  most  famous.  Indiana's  singularities  had 
already  been  exposed  by  Bayard  Rush  Hall  ("Robert  Carl- 
ton")  in  The  New  Purchase  (1855),  and  there  was  growing  up  a 
considerable  literature3  reporting 

that  curious  poor-whitey  race  which  is  called  "tar-heel"  in  the 
northern  Carolina,  "  sand-hiller  "  in  the  southern,  "corn-cracker" 
in  Kentucky,  "yahoo"  in  Mississippi,  and  in  California  "Pike" 
.  .  .  the  Hoosiers  of  the  dark  regions  of  Indiana  and  the  Egyptians 
of  southern  Illinois.4 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  VH.  *  Published  in  English  at  New  York  in  1871. 

3  See  The  Discovery  of  Pike  County  in  P.  L.  Pattee's  American  Literature  since 
1870  (1915). 

*  Roxy,  Chap.  xxvi. 


76  The  Later  Novel 

All  Eggleston's  essential  novels  are  concerned  with  this  phase 
of  American  life,  whatever  the  scene:  Indiana  in  The  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster,  The  End  of  the  World  (1872),  and  Roxy  (1878); 
Ohio  in  The  Circuit  Rider  (1874)  I  Illinois  in  The  Gray  sons  (1887); 
Minnesota  in  The  Mystery  of  Metropolisville  (1873).  Light  is 
thrown  upon  his  aims  in  fiction  by  the  fact  that  he  subsequently 
aspired  to  write  "A  History  of  Life  in  the  United  States," 
which  he  carried  through  two  erudite,  humane,  and  graceful 
volumes.1  His  Hoosier  novels,  simple  in  plot,  clear-cut  in 
characterization,  concise  and  lucid  in  language,  unwaveringly 
accurate  in  their  setting,  manners,  and  dialect,  are  indispens 
able  documents,  even  finished  chapters,  for  his  uncompleted 
masterpiece.  The  Schoolmaster,  as  first  in  the  field  and 
fresh  and  pointed,  still  remains  most  famous;  but  Roxy  is 
perhaps  most  interesting  of  them  all,  and  The  Circuit  Rider 
the  most  informing.  The  Graysons  deserves  credit  for  the 
reserve  with  which  it  admits  the  youthful  Lincoln  into  its 
narrative,  uses  him  at  a  crucial  moment,  and  then  lets  him 
withdraw  without  one  hint  of  his  future  greatness.  If  the 
morals  of  these  tales  seem  a  little  easy  to  read,  they  neverthe 
less  lack  all  that  is  sentimental,  strained,  or  perfervid.  With 
out  Mrs.  Stowe's  rush  of  narrative,  neither  has  Eggleston  her 
verbosity.  Even  where,  in  his  fidelity  to  violent  frontier 
conditions,  his  incidents  seem  melodramatic,  the  handling  is 
sure  and  direct,  for  the  reason,  as  he  says  of  The  Circuit  Rider, 
that  whatever  is  incredible  in  the  story  is  true.  No  novelist 
is  more  candid,  few  more  convincing.  With  greater  range 
and  fire  he  might  have  been  an  international  figure  as  well  as 
the  earliest  American  realist  whose  work  is  still  remembered. 3 
It  was  perhaps  a  certain  bareness  in  Middle  Western  life, 
lacking  both  the  longer  memories  of  the  Atlantic  States  and 
the  splendid  golden  expectations  of  California,  that  thus 
early  established  in  the  upper  Mississippi  valley  the  realistic 
tradition  which  descends  unbroken  through  the  work  of  Eggles 
ton,  E.  W.  Howe,  Hamlin  Garland,  and  Edgar  Lee  Masters. 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xv. 

a  Mention  should  be  made  here  of  Col.  John  W.  De  Forest  (1826-1906),  who 
has  not  deserved  that  his  novels  should  be  forgotten  as  they  have  been,  even  Miss 
Ravenel's  Conversion  from  Secession  to  Loyalty  (1867),  which  survives  only  in  the 
thoroughly  merited  praise  of  W.  D.  Howells  (My  Literary  Passions,  1895,  p.  233), 
but  which  still  seems  strong  and  natural. 


Howells's  Training  77 

From  the  Middle  West,  too,  came  the  principal  exponent  of 
native  realism,  in  himself  almost  an  entire  literary  movement, 
almost  an  academy.  William  Dean  Ho  wells  was  born  at 
Martin's  Ferry,  Ohio,  i  March,  1837,  the  grandson  of  a  Welsh 
Quaker  and  the  son  of  a  country  printer  and  editor.  Like  his 
friend  Mark  Twain  he  saw  little  of  schools  and  nothing  of 
colleges,  and  like  him  he  got  his  systematic  literary  training 
from  enforced  duties  as  a  printer  and  journalist.  But,  unlike 
Mark  Twain,  he  fell  as  naturally  into  the  best  classical  tradi 
tions  as  Goldsmith  or  Irving,  who,  with  Cervantes,  earliest 
delighted  him.  In  My  Literary  Passions  Howells  has  deli 
cately  recorded  the  development  of  his  taste.  At  first  he 
desired  to  write  verse,  and  devoted  months  to  imitating  Pope 
in  a  youthful  fanaticism  for  regularity  and  exactness.  From 
this  worship  he  turned,  at  about  sixteen,  to  Shakespeare, 
particularly  to  the  histories ;  then  to  Chaucer,  admired  for  his 
sense  of  earth  in  human  life;  and  to  Dickens,  whose  magic, 
Howells  saw,  was  rough.  Macaulay  taught  him  to  like  criti 
cism  and  furnished  him  an  early  model  of  prose  style.  Thack 
eray,  Longfellow,  Tennyson  followed  in  due  course.  Having 
taught  himself  some  Latin  and  Greek  and  more  French  and 
Spanish,  Howells  took  up  German  and  came  under  the  spell 
of  Heine,  who  dominated  him  longer  than  any  other  author 
and  who  showed  him  once  for  all  that  the  dialect  and  subjects 
of  literature  should  be  the  dialect  and  facts  of  life. 

Poems  in  the  manner  of  Heine  won  Howells  a  place  in  the 
Atlantic,  then  the  very  zenith  of  his  aspiration,  and  in  1860  he 
undertook  the  reverent  pilgrimage  to  New  England  which  he 
recounts  with  such  winning  grace  in  Literary  Friends  and 
Acquaintance.  Already  a  journalist  of  promise,  and  some 
thing  of  a  poet,  he  made  friends  wherever  he  went  and  was 
reconfirmed  in  his  literary  ambitions.  At  the  outbreak  of  the 
Civil  War  appointed  United  States  consul  at  Venice,  married  at 
Paris  in  1862  to  Miss  Elinor  G.  Mead  of  Vermont,  he  spent  four 
years  of  almost  undisturbed  leisure  in  studying  Italian  litera 
ture,  notably  Dante,  as  the  great  authoritative  voice  of  an  age, 
and  Goldoni,  whom  Howells  called  "the  first  of  the  realists." 
In  Italy,  though  he  wrote  poetry  for  the  most  part,  he  formed 
the  habit  of  close,  sympathetic,  humorous  observation  and  dis 
covered  the  ripe,  easy  style  which  made  him,  beginning  with 


78  The  Later  Novel 

Venetian  Life  (1866)  and  Italian  Journeys  (1867),  one  of  the 
happiest  of  our  literary  travellers.  From  such  work  he  moved, 
by  the  avenue  of  journalism,  only  gradually  to  fiction.  On  his 
return  to  the  United  States  in  1865  ne  became,  first,  editorial 
contributor  to  The  Nation  for  a  few  months,  and  then  assistant 
editor  and  editor  of  the  Atlantic  until  1881 . 

The  literary  notices  which  he  wrote  for  the  Atlantic  during 
these  years  of  preparation  would  show,  had  he  written  nothing 
else,  how  strong  and  steady  was  his  drift  toward  his  mature 
creed.  Not  alone  by  deliberate  thought  nor  even  by  the 
stimulus  of  polemic  was  he  carried  forward,  but  rather  by 
a  natural  process  of  growth  which,  more  than  an  artistic 
matter,  included  his  entire  philosophy.  From  his  childhood 
he  had  been  intensely  humane — sensitive  and  charitable.  This 
humaneness  now  revealed  itself  as  a  passionate  love  for  the 
truth  of  human  life  and  a  suspicion,  a  quiet  scorn,  of  those 
romantic  dreams  and  superstitious  exaggerations  by  which  less 
contented  lovers  of  life  try  to  enrich  it  or  to  escape  it.  "Ah! 
poor  Real  Life, ' '  he  wrote  in  his  first  novel,  ' '  can  I  make 
others  share  the  delight  I  find  in  thy  foolish  and  insipid  face? " 
Perhaps  Their  Wedding  Journey  (1871)  ought  hardly  to  be 
called  a  novel,  but  it  is  a  valuable  Howells  document  in  its 
zeal  for  common  actuality  and  in  its  method,  so  nearly  that  of 
his  travel  books .  A  Chance  A  cquaintance  ( 1 873) ,  more  strictly 
a  novel,  for  the  first  time  showed  that  Howells  could  not  only 
report  customs  and  sketch  characters  felicitously  but  could 
also  organize  a  plot  with  delicate  skill.  A  young  Bostonian, 
passionately  in  love  with  an  intelligent  but  unsophisticated 
inland  girl,  who  returns  his  love,  is  so  little  able  to  overcome 
his  ingrained  provincial  snobbishness  that  he  steadily  con 
descends  to  her  until  in  the  end  he  suddenly  sees,  as  she  sees, 
that  he  has  played  an  ignoble  and  vulgar  part  which  con 
vincingly  separates  them.  Nothing  could  be  more  subtle 
than  the  turn  by  which  their  relative  positions  are  reversed. 
The  style  of  A  Chance  Acquaintance,  while  not  more  graceful 
than  that  of  Howells 's  earlier  books,  is  more  assured  and  crisp. 
The  central  idea  is  clearly  conceived  and  the  outlines  sharp 
without  being  in  any  way  cruel  or  cynical.  The  descriptions 
are  exquisite,  the  dialogue  both  natural  and  revealing,  and 
over  and  through  all  is  a  lambent  mirth,  an  undeceived 


"A  Modern  Instance"  79 

kindliness  of  wisdom,  which  was  to  remain  his  essential 
quality. 

In  1869  he  had  published  a  metrical  novel,  No  Love  Lost, 
and  in  1871  a  volume  of  Suburban  Sketches;  he  continued  to 
write  criticism  and  later  began  to  write  farces ;  but  an  increas 
ing  share  of  his  energy  now  went  to  novels.  The  study  of  the 
conflict  between  different  manners  or  grades  of  sophistication, 
taken  up  at  about  the  same  time  by  Henry  James, J  concerned 
Howells  largely,  and  appears  in  A  Foregone  Conclusion  (1875), 
The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook  (1879),  and  A  Fearful  Responsibility 
(1881).  Writing  of  spiritualism  and  Shakerism  in  An  Undis 
covered  Country  (1880),  he  made  clear  his  suspicion  of  those 
types  of  otherworldliness.  And  in  1882,  with  the  publication 
of  A  Modern  Instance,  Howells  assumed  his  proper  rank  as  the 
chief  native  American  realist. 

The  superiority  of  this  book  to  all  that  had  gone  before 
can  less  justly  be  said  to  lie  in  its  firmer  grasp  of  its  materials, 
for  Howells  from  the  first  was  extraordinarily  sure  of  grasp, 
than  in  its  larger  control  of  larger  materials.  It  has  a  richer 
timbre,  a  graver,  deeper  tone.  Marcia  Gay  lord,  the  most 
passionate  of  all  his  heroines,  is  of  all  of  them  the  most  clearly 
yet  lovingly  conceived  and  elaborated.  In  the  career  of  her 
husband,  Bartley  J.  Hubbard,  Howells  accomplishes  the  dif 
ficult  feat  of  tracing  a  metamorphosis,  the  increase  of  sel 
fishness  and  vanity,  fed  in  this  case  by  Marcia 's  very  devotion, 
into  monstrous  growths  of  evil  without  a  redeeming  tincture 
even  of  boldness — mere  contemptibility.  The  process  seems 
as  simple  as  arithmetic,  but,  like  all  genuine  growth,  it  actually 
resists  analysis.  The  winter  scenes  of  the  earlier  chapters, 
faithful  and  vivid  beyond  any  prose  which  had  yet  been  written 
about  New  England,  drawn  with  an  eye  intensely  on  the  fact, 
have  still  the  larger  bearings  of  a  criticism  of  American  village 
life  in  general.  The  subsequent  adventures  of  the  Hubbards  in 
Boston,  though  so  intensely  local  in  setting  and  incident,  are 
applicable  everywhere.  Squire  Gaylord's  arraignment  of  his 
son-in-law  in  the  Indiana  courtroom  vibrates  with  a  passion 
seldom  met  in  Howells;  and  Hartley's  virtual  offer  of  his  former 
wife  to  his  former  friend  belongs  with  the  unforgettable,  unfor 
givable  basenesses  in  fiction.  After  these  episodes,  however,  it 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xn. 


8o  The  Later  Novel 

must  be  owned  that  an  anticlimax  follows  in  Halleck's  discovery 
that  his  New  England  conscience  will  now  forever  hold  him 
from  Marcia  because  he  had  loved  her  before  she  was  free. 

Between  1881,  when  Howells  resigned  from  the  Atlantic, 
and  1886,  when  he  began  to  write  for  Harper's,  he  had  some 
years  of  leisure,  particularly  signalized  by  the  publication  in 
1884  of  the  novel  which  brought  him  to  the  height  of  his 
reputation  as  well  as  of  his  art.  The  theme  of  The  Rise  of  Silas 
Lapham  is  the  universal  one,  very  dear  in  a  republic,  of  the 
rising  fortunes  of  a  man  who  has  no  aid  but  virtue  and  capacity. 
Lapham,  a  country -bred,  "  self  -made"  Vermonter,  appears 
when  he  has  already  achieved  wealth,  and  finds  himself  drawn, 
involuntarily  enough,  into  the  more  difficult  task  of  adjusting 
himself  and  his  family  to  the  manners  of  fastidious  Boston. 
A  writer  primarily  satirical  might  have  been  contented  to 
make  game  of  the  situation.  Howells,  keenly  as  he  sets  forth 
the  conflict  of  standards,  goes  beyond  satire  to  a  depth  of 
meaning  which  comes  only  from  a  profound  understanding  of 
the  part  which  artificial  distinctions  play  in  human  life  and 
a  mellow  pity  that  such  little  things  can  have  such  large  con 
sequences  of  pain  and  error.  The  conflict,  however,  while 
constantly  pervasive  in  the  book,  does  not  usurp  the  action ; 
the  Lapham  family  has  serious  concerns  that  might  arise  in 
any  social  stratum.  Most  intense  and  dramatic  of  these  is  the 
fact  that  the  suitor  of  one  daughter  is  believed  by  the  whole 
family  to  be  in  love  with  the  other  until  the  very  moment  of  his 
declaration.  The  distress  into  which  they  are  thrown  is 
presented  with  a  degree  of  comprehension  rare  in  any  novel, 
and  here  matched  with  a  common  sense  which  rises  to  some 
thing  half -inspired  in  Lapham 's  perception — reduced  to  words, 
however,  by  a  friendly  clergyman — that  in  such  a  case  super 
fluous  self-sacrifice  would  be  morbid  and  that,  since  none  is 
guilty,  one  had  better  suffer  than  three.  A  certain  Tightness 
and  soundness  of  feeling,  indeed,  govern  the  entire  narrative. 
As  it  proceeds,  as  Lapham  falls  into  heavy  business  vicissitudes 
and  finally  to  comparative  poverty  again,  and  yet  all  the  time 
rises  in  spiritual  worth,  the  record  steadily  grows  in  that  dignity 
and  significance  which,  according  to  Howells 's  creed,  is  founded 
only  on  absolute  truth. 

Silas  Lapham  marked  the  culmination  of  Howells's  art, 


Howells  and  Tolstoy  8l 

approached  the  next  year  in  the  exquisite  interlude  Indian 
Summer,  gayly,  lightly,  sweetly,  pungently  narrating  the  loves 
of  a  man  of  forty,  and  not  quite  approached  in  The  Minister's 
Charge  (1887),  which  shows  a  homespun  poet  moving  in  the 
direction  of  comfortable  prose.  But  Howells  had  not  yet 
shaped  his  final  philosophy,  which  grew  up  within  him  after  he 
had  left  Boston  for  New  York  in  1886  and  had  established  his 
connection  with  Harper's  Magazine.  Again ,  as  from  the  A  tlantic 
literary  notices,  light  falls  upon  his  growth  from  the  monthly 
articles  which  he  wrote  for  "The  Editor's  Study"  between 
1886  and  1891.  Chiefly  discussions  of  current  books,  con 
cerned  with  poetry,  history,  biography  nearly  as  much  as 
with  fiction,  these  essays  remarkably  encouraged  the  growth 
of  realism  in  America,  and  most  eloquently  commended  to 
native  readers  such  Latin  realists  as  Valera,  Valdes,  Galdos,  and 
Verga,  and  the  great  Russians  Turgenev,  Dostoevsky,  and 
Tolstoy.  It  will  not  do  to  say  that  these  foreign  realists  moulded 
Howells,  for  his  development,  whatever  his  readiness  to  assimi 
late,  was  always  from  within  outward,  but  it  helps  to  distinguish 
between  the  Howells  who  lived  before  1886  and  the  one  who 
lived  after  that  date,  to  say  that  the  earlier  man  had  one  of  his 
supreme  literary  passions  for  the  art  of  Turgenev,  and  that  the 
later  Howells,  knowing  Tolstoy,  had  become  impatient  of  even 
the  most  secret  artifice.  For  Tolstoy  was  Howells's  great 
passion.  "As  much  as  one  merely  human  being  can  help 
another  I  believe,"  said  Howells,  "that  he  has  helped  me;  he 
has  not  influenced  me  in  aesthetics  only,  but  in  ethics,  too,  so 
that  I  can  never  again  see  life  in  the  way  I  saw  it  before  I  knew 
him."  Tolstoy's  novels  seemed  to  Howells  as  perfect  as  his 
doctrine.  "To  my  thinking  they  transcend  in  truth,  which  is 
the  highest  beauty,  all  other  works  of  fiction  that  have  been 
written.  .  .  .  [He]  has  a  method  which  not  only  seems  without 
artifice,  but  is  so." 

This  was  some  ten  years  after  Howells  had  first  read 
Tolstoy,  ten  years  during  which,  in  spite  of  Tolstoy's  example, 
he  had  not  at  all  reverted  to  the  preacher  but  had  published 
many  merry  farces  and  had  begun  to  be  sunnily  reminiscent 
in  A  Boy's  Town  (1890).  But  though  too  much  himself  to  be 
converted  from  his  artistic  practice,  Howells  had  broadened 
his  field  and  deepened  his  inquiries.  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes 

Vol.  in— 6 


82  The  Later  Novel 

(1889),  in  which  Basil  and  Isabel  March,  the  bridal  couple  of 
Their  Wedding  Journey,  now  grown  middle  aged,  give  up 
Boston,  as  Howells  had  himself  recently  done,  for  a  future  in 
New  York,  is  not  content  to  point  out  merely  the  unfamiliar 
fashions  of  life  which  they  meet  but  is  full  of  conscience  regard 
ing  certain  evils  of  the  modern  social  order.  Or  rather,  How- 
ells  had  turned  from  the  clash  of  those  lighter  manners  which 
belong  to  Comedy  and  had  set  himself  to  discuss  the  deeper 
manners  of  the  race  which  belong  to  morals  and  religion.  He 
wrote  at  a  moment  of  hope : 

We  had  passed  through  a  period  of  strong  emotioning  in  the 
direction  of  the  humaner  economics,  if  I  may  phrase  it  so;  the  rich 
seemed  not  so  much  to  despise  the  poor,  the  poor  did  not  so  hope 
lessly  repine.  The  solution  of  the  riddle  of  the  painful  earth  through 
the  dreams  of  Henry  George,  through  the  dreams  of  Edward 
Bellamy,  through  the  dreams  of  all  the  generous  visionaries  of  the 
past,  seemed  not  impossibly  far  off.1 

In  this  mood  Howells 's  theme  compelled  him  so  much  that 
the  story  moved  forward  almost  without  his  conscious  agency, 
"though,"  he  carefully  insists,  "I  should  not  like  to  intimate 
anything  mystical  in  the  fact."  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes 
outdoes  all  Ho  wells 's  novels  in  the  conduct  of  different  groups 
of  characters,  in  the  superb  naturalness  with  which  now  one 
and  now  another  rises  to  the  surface  of  the  narrative  and  then 
retreats  without  a  trace  of  management.  New  Englanders, 
New  Yorkers,  Southerners,  Westerners,  all  appear  in  their 
true  native  colours,  as  do  the  most  diverse  ranks  of  society,  and 
many  professions,  in  their  proper  dress  and  gesture.  The 
episode  of  the  street-car  strike,  brought  in  near  the  end, 
dramatizes  the  struggle  which  has  been  heretofore  in  the  novel 
rather  a  shadow  than  a  fact,  but  Howells,  artist  first  tlren 
partisan,  employs  it  almost  wholly  as  a  sort  of  focal  point  to 
which  the  attention  of  all  his  characters  is  drawn,  with  the 
result  that,  having  already  revealed  themselves  generally, 
they  are  more  particularly  revealed  in  their  varying  degrees 
of  sympathy  for  the  great  injustice  out  of  which  class 
war  arises.  In  this  manner,  without  extravagant  emphasis, 

1  Preface  dated  July,  1909. 


Howells's  Later  Writings  83 

Howells  judges  a  generation  at  the  same  time  that  he  portrays 
it  in  the  best  of  all  novels  of  New  York. 

Howells's  Tolstoyanism  appears  still  more  frankly  in  his 
two  Utopian  tales,  A  Traveller  from  Altruria  (1894)  and 
Through  the  Eye  of  the  Needle  (1907),  in  which  he  compares 
America  with  the  lovely  land  of  Altruria,  where  all  work  is 
honourable  and  servants  are  unknown,  where  capital  and 
interest  are  only  memories,  where  equality  is  complete,  and 
men  and  women,  in  the  midst  of  beauty,  lead  lives  that  are 
just,  temperate,  and  kind.  The  stern  tones  of  Tolstoy  How- 
ells  never  learned,  or  at  least  never  used,  for  he  could  not  lose 
his  habitual  kindness,  even  when  he  spoke  most  firmly.  It 
was  kindness,  not  timidity,  however,  for  though  he  held  steadily 
to  his  art  he  did  not  keep  silence  before  even  the  most  pop 
ular  injustices.  He  plead  for  the  Chicago  ' '  anarchists ' '  and  he 
condemned  the  annexation  of  the  Philippines  in  clear,  strong 
tones;  no  good  cause  lacked  the  support  of  his  voice.  He  was 
extraordinarily  fecund.  After  1892  he  succeeded  George 
William  Curtis  in  "The  Easy  Chair"  of  Harper's  and  wrote 
monthly  articles  which,  less  exclusively  literary  than  the 
"Editor's  Study"  pieces,  carried  on  the  same  tradition.  His 
most  significant  critical  writings,  chiefly  concerned  with  the 
art  he  himself  practiced,  are  found  in  Criticism  and  Fiction 
(1891),  Heroines  of  Fiction  (1901),  and  Literature  and  Life 
(1902).  Reminiscences  and  travels  assume  a  still  larger 
place  in  his  later  work.  After  A  Boy's  Town  came  My 
Literary  Passions  (1895),  and  then  Literary  Friends  and  Ac 
quaintance  (1900),  of  accounts  of  the  classic  age  of  Boston 
and  Cambridge  easily  the  best.  He  revisited  Europe  and 
left  records  in  London  Films  (1905),  Certain  Delightful  Eng 
lish  Towns  (1906),  Roman  Holidays  (1908),  Seven  English 
Cities  (1909),  Familiar  Spanish  Travels  (1913),  in  which  he 
occasionally  drew  his  matter  out  thin  but  in  which  he  was 
never  for  a  page  dull,  or  untruthful,  or  sour,  after  the  an 
cient  habit  of  travellers.  My  Mark  Twain  (1910)  is  incom 
parably  the  finest  of  all  the  interpretations  of  Howells's  great 
friend,  while  Years  of  My  Youth  (1916),  written  when  the 
author  was  nearly  eighty,  is  the  work  of  a  master  whom  age 
had  made  wise  and  left  strong.  In  1909  he  was  chosen  presi 
dent  of  the  American  Academy,  and  six  years  later  he  received 


84  The  Later  Novel 

the  National  Institute's  gold  medal  "for  distinguished  work 
in  fiction." 

The  Institute  rightly  judged  that,  important  as  Howells  is 
as  critic  and  memoir-writer,  he  must  be  considered  first  of  all  a 
novelist.  His  later  books  of  fiction  make  up  a  long  list.  That 
he  could  produce  such  an  array  of  fiction  is  sign  enough  that  he 
had  not  been  overpowered  by  humanitarianism ;  a  better  sign 
is  the  fact  that  these  later  novels  are  even  kinder,  gayer, 
mellower  than  the  early  ones.  In  them  his  investigation  moves 
over  a  wide  area,  which  includes  the  solid  realism  of  The  Land 
lord  at  Lion's  Head  (1897)  and  The  Kentons  (1902) ;  the  sombre 
study  of  a  crime  in  The  Quality  of  Mercy  (1892);  the  keen 
statement  of  problems  in  An  Imperative  Duty  (1892)  and  The 
Son  of  Royal  Langbrith  ( 1 904) ;  happier  topics  as  in  Miss 
Bellard's  Inspiration  (1905);  and,  very  notably,  subtle  explor 
ations  of  what  is  or  what  seems  to  be  the  supersensual  world  in 
The  Shadow  of  a  Dream  (1890),  Questionable  Shapes  (1903) — 
short  stories,  Between  the  Dark  and  the  Daylight  (1907) — short 
stories,  and  The  Leatherwood  God  (1916),  which  last,  the  study 
of  a  frontier  impostor  who  proclaims  himself  a  god,  best  hints 
at  Howells's  views  of  the  relation  between  the  real  world  which 
he  had  so  long  explored  and  so  lovingly  portrayed  and  those 
vast  spaces  which  appear  to  be  beyond  it  for  the  futile  tempting 
of  religionists  and  romanticists. 

Holding  so  firmly  to  his  religion  of  reality,  and  with  his 
varied  powers,  it  is  not  perhaps  to  be  wondered  at  that  Howells 
produced  in  his  fourscore  books  the  most  considerable  tran 
script  of  American  life  yet  made  by  one  man.  Nor,  of  course, 
should  it  be  wondered  at,  that  in  spite  of  his  doctrine  of  imper 
sonality  the  world  of  America  as  he  has  set  it  down  is  full,  or 
his  benignance  and  noble  health,  never  illicit  or  savage  and 
but  rarely  sordid.  His  natural  gentleness  and  reserve,  even 
more  than  the  decorous  traditions  of  the  seventies  and 
eighties,  kept  him  from  the  violent  frankness  of,  say,  Zola, 
whose  books  Howells  thought  "indecent  through  the  facts 
that  they  nakedly  represent."  What  Howells  invariably 
practiced  was  a  kind  of  selective  realism,  choosing  his  ma 
terial  as  a  sage  chooses  his  words,  decently.  Most  of  his 
stories  end  "happily,  "  that  is,  in  congenial  marriages  with  good 
expectations.  He  did  not  mind  employing  one  favoured  situ- 


Howells's  Place  and  Rank  85 

ation — in  which  a  humorous  husband  and  a  serious  wife  find 
themselves  responsible  for  a  young  girl  during  her  courtship— 
so  often  as  to  suggest  a  personal  experience.  Not  without  some 
complaint,  he  nevertheless  not  too  rebelliously  accepted  the 
modern  novelist's  fate  of  writing  largely  for  women,  a  sex 
which  in  Howells's  world  appears  as  often  shallow  and  change 
ful  and  almost  always  quite  unreasonable.  Thus  limited  as  to 
subjects  by  his  temper  and  his  times,  he  was  likewise  limited 
as  to  treatment.  On  every  ground  he  preferred  to  make 
relatively  little  of  impassioned  or  tragic  moments,  believing 
that  the  true  bulk  of  life  is  to  be  represented  by  its  common 
places.  ' '  It  will  not  do, ' '  he  wrote,  speaking  of  the  ducal  palace 
at  Weimar,  ' '  to  lift  either  houses  or  men  far  out  of  the  average ; 
they  become  spectacles,  ceremonies ;  they  cease  to  have  charm, 
to  have  character,  which  belong  to  the  levels  of  life,  where  alone 
there  are  ease  and  comfort,  and  human  nature  may  be  itself,  with 
all  the  little  delightful  differences  repressed  in  those  who  repre 
sent  and  typify."1  (The  pendulum  had  swung  far  since  the 
days  when  Cooper  and  Hawthorne  repined  over  the  democratic 
barrenness  of  American  manners !)  No  one  has  written  more 
engaging  commonplaces  than  Howells,  though  perhaps  some 
thing  like  the  century  which  has  elapsed  since  the  death  of  Jane 
Austen — Howells's  ideal  among  English  novelists: — will  have 
to  pass  before  the  historian  can  be  sure  that  work  artistically 
flawless  may  be  kept  alive,  lacking  malice  or  intensity,  by  ease 
and  grace  and  charm,  by  kind  wisdom  and  thoughtful  mirth. 

Hawthorne  and  Mrs.  Stowe,  romance  and  sentiment,  had 
divided  first  honours  in  American  fiction  during  the  twenty 
years  1850-1870;  the  seventies  belonged  primarily  to  the  short 
story  of  the  school  of  Bret  Harte.  The  novel  of  that  decade, 
thus  a  little  neglected,  profited  in  at  least  one  respect :  it  ceased 
to  be  the  form  of  fiction  on  which  all  beginners  tried  their  pens 
and  passed  rather  into  the  hands  of  men  whose  eyes  looked  a 
little  beyond  easy  conquests  and  an  immediate  market.  This 
fact,  with  the  rapid  growth  of  the  artistic  conscience  in  the  cos- 
mopolitanizing  years  which  followed  the  Civil  War,  serves  to 
explain  in  part  the  remarkable  florescence,  the  little  renaissance 
of  fiction  in  the  eighties.  2  The  short  story  may  specially 

1  Their  Silver  Wedding  Journey  (1899),  chap.  Ix. 

3  A  Renaissance  in  the  Eighties,  Nation,  12  October,  1918. 


86  The  Later  Novel 

claim  Bret  Harte,  Aldrich,  Stockton,  Bunner,  Rose  Terry 
Cooke,  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  Mary  E.  Wilkins  Freeman,  Cable, 
Constance  Fenimore  Woolson,  Charles  Egbert  Craddock,  John 
ston,  Page, *  and  Joel  Chandler  Harris, 2 — though  they  all  wrote 
novels  of  merit, — because  their  talents  were  for  pungency,  fancy, 
brevity.  But  to  the  novel  of  the  decade  three  of  the  five  major 
American  novelists,  Mark  Twain,  Howells,  Henry  James,  con 
tributed  their  greatest  triumphs;  then  appeared  Ben-Hur,  for 
a  good  while  rivalled  in  popularity  by  Judge  Albion  Wine- 
gar  Tourgee's  A  Fool's  Errand  (1879),  a  fiery  document  upon 
Reconstruction  in  the  South;  and  there  were  such  diverse 
pieces  as  Edward  Bellamy's  much-read  Utopian  romance 
Looking  Backward  (1888),  dainty  exotics  like  Blanche  Willis 
Howard's  Guenn  A  Wave  on  the  Breton  Coast  (1884)  an<^ 
Arthur  Sherburne  Hardy's  Passe  Rose  (1889),  E.  W.  Howe's 
grim  The  Story  of  a  Country  Town  (1883),  Helen  Hunt  Jackson's 
Ramona  (1884),  passionately  pleading  the  cause  of  the  Indians 
of  California,  Miss  Woolson 's  East  Angels  (1886),  just  less  than 
a  classic,  Henry  Adams 's3  Democracy  (1880)  and  John  Hay's4 
The  Bread-Winners  (1884),  excursions  into  fiction  of  two  men 
whose  largest  gifts  lay  elsewhere,  the  earlier  army  novels  of 
General  Charles  King,  and  the  earlier  detective  stories  of 
Anna  Katharine  Green  (Rohlfs).  As  a  rule  these  novels  seem 
more  deftly  built  than  the  novels  of  the  sixties  or  seventies, 
more  sophisticated.  People  talked  somewhat  less  than  for 
merly  about  "The  Great  American  Novel, "  that  strange  eido 
lon  so  clearly  descended  from  the  large  aspirations  of  men  like 
Timothy  Dwight  and  Joel  Barlow5  but  by  1850  thought  of  less 
as  an  epic  which  should  enshrine  the  national  past  than  as  a 
great  prose  performance  reflecting  the  national  present 

In  the  eighties  began  the  career  of  that  later  American 
writer  who  gave  to  the  novel  his  most  complete  allegiance, 
undeterred  by  the  vogue  of  briefer  narratives  or  other  forms 
of  literature.  FraaH*is  Marion  Crawford,  son  of  the  sculptor 
Thomas  Crawford  and  nephew  of  Julia  Ward  Howe,  was  born 
at  Bagni  di  Lucca,  Tuscany,  in  1854.  He  prepared  for  college 
at  St.  Paul's  School,  New  Hampshire,  and  entered  Harvard, 

1  For  these  writers  see  Book  III,  Chap.  vi.      2  See  Book  III,  Chap.  v. 

3  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xv.  <  See  Book  III,  Chaps,  x  and  xv. 

s  See  Book  I,  Chap.  ix. 


F.  Marion  Crawford  87 

but  soon  left  it  to  study  in  Europe,  successively  at  Cambridge, 
Heidelberg,  and  Rome.  Having  become  interested  in  Sanscrit, 
and  having  lost  his  expectations  of  a  fortune,  he  went  to  India 
and  there  edited  The  Indian  Herald  at  Allahabad.  In  1881 
he  returned  to  America,  spent  another  year  upon  Sanscrit 
with  Professor  Lanman  of  Harvard,  and  wrote  his  first  novel, 
Mr.  Isaacs  (1882),  on  the  advice  of  an  uncle  who  had  been 
struck  by  Crawford's  oral  account  of  the  central  personage. 
The  success  of  the  experiment  was  so  prompt  and  complete 
that  its  author  recognized  his  vocation  once  for  all,  much  as 
does  George  Wood  in  The  Three  Fates  (1892),  a  novel  admitted 
to  be  partly  autobiographical.  Crawford  went  to  Italy  in 
1883,  and  thereafter  spent  most  of  his  life  at  Sorrento.  He 
still  travelled,  grew  wealthy  from  the  sale  of  his  novels,  became 
a  Roman  Catholic,  and  died  in  1909. 

Except  that  toward  the  end  of  his  life  he  partly  turned 
from  fiction  to  sober — and  not  remarkably  spirited — history, 
Crawford  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  changed  his  methods 
from  his  earliest  novel  to  his  latest.  Improvisation  was  his 
knack  and  forte;  he  wrote  much  and  speedily.  His  settings 
he  took  down,  for  the  most  part,  from  personal  observation 
in  the  many  localities  he  knew  at  first  hand;  his  characters, 
too,  are  frequently  studies  from  actual  persons.  In  his  plots, 
commonly  held  his  peculiar  merit,  Crawford  cannot  be  called 
distinctly  original :  he  employs  much  of  the  paraphernalia  of 
melodrama — lost  or  hidden  wills,  forgeries,  great  persons  in 
disguise,  sudden  legacies,  physical  violence;  moreover,  it  is 
almost  a  formula  with  him  to  carry  a  story  by  natural  motives 
until  about  the  last  third,  when  melodrama  enters  to  perplex 
the  narrative  and  to  arouse  due  suspense  until  the  triumph 
ant  and  satisfying  denouement.  And  yet  so  fresh,  strong, 
and  veracious  is  the  movement  that  it  nearly  obscures  these 
conventional  elements.  Movement,  indeed,  not  plot  in  the 
stricter  sense,  is  Crawford's  chief  excellence.  He  could  not  tell 
a  story  badly,  but  flowed  on  without  breaking  or  faltering, 
managing  his  material  and  disposing  his  characters  and  scenes 
without  apparent  effort,  in  a  style  always  clear  and  bright. 
This  lightness  of  movement  is  accompanied,  perhaps  accounted 
for,  by  an  absence  of  profound  ideas  or  of  any  of  that  rich  colour 
of  life  which  comes  only — as  in  Scott,  Balzac,  Tolstoy — when 


88  The  Later  Novel 

fiction  is  deeply  based  in  a  native  soil.  As  to  his  ideas,  Craw 
ford  appears  to  have  had  few  that  were  unusual,  and  at  least  he 
suspected  such  ideas  as  the  substance  of  fiction,  about  the  aims 
and  uses  of  which  he  is  very  explicit  in  The  Novel:  What  It  Is 
(1893).  Novelists  he  called  "public  amusers, "  who  must 
always  write  largely  about  love  and  in  Anglo-Saxon  countries 
must  write  under  the  eyes  of  the  ubiquitous  young  girl.  They 
might  therefore  as  well  be  reconciled  to  the  exigencies  of  their 
business.  For  his  own  part  he  thought  problem  novels  odious, 
cared  nothing  for  dialect  or  local  colour,  believed  it  a  mistake  to 
make  a  novel  too  minute  a  picture  of  one  generation  lest  another 
should  think  it  "old-fashioned,"  and  preferred  to  regard  the 
novel  as  a  sort  of  "pocket  theatre" — with  ideals,  it  should  be 
added,  much  like  those  of  the  British  and  American  stage  from 
1870  to  1890. 

Thus  far  Crawford  was  carried  by  his  cosmopolitan  training 
and  ideals :  he  believed  that  human  beings  are  much  the  same 
everywhere  and  can  be  made  intelligible  everywhere  if  reported 
lucidly  and  discreetly.  Reading  his  books  is  like  conversing 
with  a  remarkably  humane,  sharp-eyed  traveller  who  appears 
—at  least  at  first — to  have  seen  every  nook  and  corner  of  the 
world.  Zoroaster  (1885),  Khaled  (1891),  and  Via  Crucis  (1898) 
have  their  scenes  laid  in  Asia;  Paul  Patoff  (1887),  in  Con 
stantinople;  The  Witch  of  Prague  (1891),  in  Bohemia;  Dr. 
Claudius  (1883),  Greifenstein  (1889),  and  A  Cigarette-Maker's 
Romance  (1890),  in  Germany;  In  the  Palace  of  the  King  (1900), 
in  Spain;  A  Tale  of  a  Lonely  Parish  (1886)  and  Fair  Margaret 
(1905),  in  England;  An  American  Politician  (1885),  The  Three 
Fates  (1892),  Marion  Darche  (1893),  Katharine  Lauderdale 
(1894),  and  The  Ralstons  (1895),  in  America;  and,  most  import 
ant  group  of  all,  the  Italian  tales,  of  which  A  Roman  Singer 
(1884),  Marzio's  Crucifix  (1887),  The  Children  of  the  King 
(1892),  and  Pietro  Gh  sleri  (1893)  are  but  little  less  interesting 
than  the  famous  Roman  series, — Saracinesca  (1887),  San? 
Ilario  (1889),  Don  Orsino  (1892),  and  Corleone  (1896).  The 
Saracinesca  cycle  most  of  all  promises  to  survive,  partly  because 
as  a  cycle  it  is  imposing  but  even  more  particularly  because 
here  Crawford's  merits  appear  to  best  advantage.  After  all, 
though  he  considered  himself  an  American,  and  though  he 
knew  many  parts  of  the  globe,  he  knew  the  inner  circles  of 


The  Later  Historical  Romance  89 

Rome  better  than  any  other  section  of  society,  and  really 
minute  knowledge  came,  as  it  did  not  always  in  his  stories  of 
America,  for  instance,  and  almost  never  did  in  his  historical 
tales,  to  the  aid  of  his  invariable  qualities  of  movement  and 
lucidity  and  large  general  knowledge  of  life.  If  in  this  admir 
able  cycle,  which  is  to  Crawford's  total  work  much  what 
the  Leather-Stocking  cycle  is  to  Cooper's,  Crawford  actually 
achieved  less  than  Cooper,  it  is  to  some  extent  for  the  reason 
that  some  cosmopolitanism  finds  it  even  harder  than  does  some 
provincialism  to  impart  to  fiction  true  depth  and  body ;  that 
reality,  like  charity,  often  begins  at  home. 

In  the  eighties  realism  was  the  dominant  creed  in  fiction, 
which  in  practice  followed  its  creed  somewhat  closely,  with 
exceptions,  of  course,  among  the  purely  popular  novelists 
like  Roe  and  General  Wallace.  The  same  decade,  however, 
saw  the  beginnings  of  two  movements  which  became  marked 
in  the  nineties,  both  of  them  natural  outcomes  of  the  official 
realism  of  Howells  and  James.  One  led,  by  reaction,  to  the 
rococo  type  of  historical  romance  which  flourished  enormously 
at  the  end  of  the  century ;  and  the  other  to  the  harsher  natural 
ism  which  shook  off  the  decorums  of  the  first  realists,  contended 
with  the  historical  romancers,  first  succumbed  to  them,  and 
then  succeeded  them  in  power  and  favour.  The  historical 
tendency,  less  than  the  naturalistic  a  matter  of  doctrine, 
came  at  first  from  the  South  and  West:  from  writers  who 
painted  the  amiable  colours  of  antebellum  plantation  life — 
Cable,  Page,  Joel  Chandler  Harris;  or  from  California,  from 
writers  who  tried  to  catch  the  charm  of  old  Spanish  days — 
Bret  Harte  and  Helen  Hunt  Jackson ;  or  from  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  from  writers  who,  thanks  to  Parkman,  had  discovered 
the  richness  and  variety  of  the  French  regime  there — Con 
stance  Fenimore  Woolson  and  Mary  Hartwell  Catherwood. 
Of  all  these  Mrs.  Jackson  wrote  perhaps  the  best  single  romance 
in  Ramona  (1884),  a  story  aimed  to  carry  forward  an  indict 
ment,  already  begun  in  the  same  author's  A  Century  of  Dishonor 
(1881),  against  the  treatment  of  the  Indians  by  their  white 
conquerors.  Ramona,  however,  and  her  Temecula  husband 
Alessandro  have  so  little  Indian  blood  that  their  wrongs  seem 
less  those  of  Indians  than  the  wrongs  which  all  the  older 
Californians,  Indian  or  Spanish,  suffered  from  the  predacious 


90  The  Later  Novel 

vanguard  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  conquest.  And  the  romance 
dominates  the  problem.  For  Mrs.  Jackson,  Spanish  California 
had  been  a  paradise  of  patriarchal  estates  set  in  fertile  valleys, 
steeped  in  drowsy  antiquity,  and  cherished  by  fine  unworldly 
priests.  Her  tragic  story  derives  much  of  its  impressiveness 
from  the  pomp  of  its  setting,  the  strength  of  its  contrasts,  its 
passionate  colour  and  poetry.  Mrs.  Catherwood  wrote  graceful 
and  engaging  but  not  quite  permanent  tales,  from  The  Romance 
of  Dollar d  (1889)  toLazarre  (1901),  which  added  a  definite  little 
province  to  our  historical  fiction — the  French  in  the  interior 
of  the  continent. 

But  the  later  historical  romance  is  best  studied  in  the  work 
of  Dr.  Silas  Weir  Mitchell  (1829-1913)  of  Pennsylvania,  who, 
on  the  advice  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  early  set  aside  his 
literary  ambitions  until  he  should  have  established  himself 
in  a  profession,  became  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  medical 
specialists,  particularly  in  nervous  diseases,  and  only  after  he 
was  fifty  gave  much  time  to  verse  or  fiction,  which,  indeed, 
he  continued  to  produce  with  no  diminution  of  power  until 
the  very  year  of  his  death.  His  special  knowledge  enabled 
him  to  write  authoritatively  of  difficult  and  wayward  states 
of  body  and  mind;  as  in  The  Case  of  George  Dedlow  (1880), 
so  circumstantial  in  its  impossibilities,  Roland  Blake  (1886), 
which  George  Meredith  greatly  admired,  The  Autobiography 
of  a  Quack  (1900),  concerning  the  dishonourable  fringes  of 
the  medical  profession,  and  Constance  Trescott  (1905),  con 
sidered  by  Dr.  Mitchell  his  best-constructed  novel  and 
certainly  his  most  thorough-going  study  of  a  pathological 
mood.  His  psychological  stories,  however,  had  on  the  whole 
neither  the  appeal  nor  the  merit  of  his  historical  romances, 
which  began  with  Hephzibah  Guinness  (1880)  and  extended  to 
Westways  (1913).  Westways  is  a  large  and  truthful  chronicle  of 
the  effects  of  the  Civil  War  in  Pennsylvania,  but  Mitchell's 
best  work  belongs  to  the  Revolutionary  and  Washington  cycle : 
Hugh  Wynne  Free  Quaker  Sometimes  Brevet  Lieutenant-Colonel 
on  the  Staff  of  his  Excellency  General  Washington  (1896),  The 
Youth  of  Washington  Told  in  the  Form  of  an  Autobiography 
(1904),  and  The  Red  City  A  Novel  of  the  Second  Administration 
of  President  Washington  (1908).  Dr.  Mitchell's  own  favourite 
among  his  books,  The  Adventures  of  Francois,  Foundling,  Thief, 


S.  Weir  Mitchell  91 

Juggler,  and  Fencing- Master  during  the  French  Revolution  (1898) , 
stands  as  close  to  the  American  stories  as  did  Paris  to  the  city 
of  Franklin  in  the  later  eighteenth  century.  Revolutionary 
these  narratives  are  only  by  virtue  of  the  time  in  which  they 
take  place,  for  their  sympathies  are  almost  wholly  with  the 
aristocrats  in  France,  with  the  respectable  and  Federalist 
classes  in  America.  Philadelphia,  generally  the  centre  of  the 
action,  appears  under  a  softer,  mellower  light  than  has  been 
thrown  by  our  romaneers  upon  any  other  Revolutionary  city, 
and  Washington,  though  drawn,  like  Philadelphia,  as  much  to 
the  life  as  Dr.  Mitchell  could  draw  him,  is  a  demigod  still. 

By  the  time  The  Red  City  appeared  its  type  was  losing 
vogue,  but  Hugh  Wynne  and  The  Adventures  of  Francois  came 
on  the  high  tide  of  the  remarkable  outburst  of  historical  ro 
mance  just  preceding  the  Spanish  War.  The  best  books  of  the 
sort  need  but  to  be  named :  Mark  Twain's  Personal  Recollections 
of  Joan  of  Arc  (1896),  Frederic  Jesup  Stimson's  King  Noanett 
(1896),  James  Lane  Allen's  The  Choir  Invisible  (1897),  Charles 
Major's  When  Knighthood  Was  in  Flower  (1898),  Mary  John 
ston's  Prisoners  of  Hope  (1898)  and  To  Have  and  To  Hold 
(1899),  Paul  Leicester  Ford's  Janice  Meredith  (1899),  Win 
ston  Churchill's  Richard  Carvel  (1899)  and  The  Crisis  (1901), 
Booth  Tarkington's  Monsieur  Beaucaire  (1900),  Maurice 
Thompson's  Alice  of  Old  Vincennes  (1900),  Henry  Har- 
land's  The  Cardinal's  Snuff -Box  (1901).  In  part  they  were 
an  American  version  of  the  movement  led  in  England  by 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  Rider  Haggard,  Conan  Doyle,  and 
Anthony  Hope;  the  ' ' Ruritanian "  romance,  for  instance,  of 
Anthony  Hope  was  so  popular  as  to  be  delightfully  parodied  in 
George  Ade's  The  Slim  Princess  (1907);  all  these  tales  were 
courtly,  high-sounding,  decorative,  and  poetical.  But  their 
enormous  popularity — some  of  them  sold  half  a  million  copies 
in  the  two  or  three  years  of  their  brief  heyday — points  to  some 
native  condition.  In  the  history  of  the  American  imagination 
they  must  be  thought  of  as  marking  that  moment  at  which,  in 
the  excitement  which  accompanied  the  Spanish  War,  the  nation 
suddenly  rediscovered  a  longer  and  more  picturesque  past  than 
it  had  been  popularly  aware  of  since  the  Civil  War.  The 
episode  was  brief,  and  most  of  the  books  now  seem  gilt  where 
some  of  them  once  looked  like  gold,  but  it  was  a  vivid  moment 


92  The  Later  Novel 

in  the  national  consciousness,  and  if  it  founded  no  new  legends 
it  deepened  o  d  ones. 

Romance  did  not  have  the  field  entirely  during  these 
years,  for  there  was  also  a  strong  naturalistic  trend,  which 
dated  from  the  eighties,  when  Henry  James  had  seemed  too 
foreign  and  Howells  too  hopeful.  In  1883  Edgar  Watson 
Howe,  of  Kansas,  had  published  The  Story  of  a  Country  Town, 
a  book  almost  painfully  overlooked  and  yet  worthy  to  be 
mentioned  with  Wuthering  Heights  or  Moby  Dick  for  power 
and  terror.  Unlike  those  two  it  lacks  locality,  as  if  the  bare, 
sunburned  Kansas  plain  had  no  real  depth,  no  mystery  in  itself, 
and  could  find  no  native  motif  but  the  smoldering  discontent 
of  that  inarticulate  frontier.  Sternest,  grimmest  of  American 
novels,  it  moves  with  the  cold  tread  and  the  hard  diction  of  a 
saga.  No  shallow  mind  could  have  conceived  the  blind,  black, 
impossible  passion  of  Joe  Erring  or  have  conducted  it  to  the 
purgation  and  tranquillity  which  succeeds  the  catastrophe. 
Plainly,  the  author  had  deliberately  hardened  his  heart  against 
the  too  facile  views  of  contemporary  novelists.  It  is  this 
stiffening  of  the  conscience  which  goes  with  all  the  later 
naturalistic  writers  in  America;  they  are  polemic  haters  of 
the  national  optimism.  Howe's  early  experiment  was  fol 
lowed,  not  imitated,  by  a  brilliant  group  of  writers  undoubt 
edly  nearer  to  Zola  than  to  Howells:  Hamlin  Garland,1  best 
in  short  stories,  who  stressed  the  sordid  facts  of  Middle  Western 
farm  life  and  who  spoke  for  the  group  in  his  volume  of  essays 
Crumbling  Idols  (1894);  Henry  Blake  Fuller,  who  wrote  The 
Chevalier  of  Pensieri-Vani  (1890)  under  the  aegis  of  Charles 
Eliot  Norton  and  then  the  realistic  novel  of  Chicago,  The  Cliff  - 
Dwellers  (1893);  Harold  Frederic,  who  after  his  lucid  and 
accurate  romance  of  the  Mohawk,  In  the  Valley  (1890), 
followed  Ambrose  Bierce2  with  energetic  Civil  War  stories 
and  later  made  a  sensation  with  The  Damnation  of  Theron  Ware 
(1896)  and  The  Market-Place  (1899) ;  and  the  notable  pair  who 
promised  much  but  died  young,  Stephen  Crane  (1871-1900) 
and  Frank  Norris  (1870-1902). 

Crane  was  a  genius  who  intensely  admired  Tolstoy  and 
somewhat  febrilely  aimed  at  absolute  truthfulness  in  his 
fiction.  Maggie  A  Girl  of  the  Streets  (1896),  written  when  he 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi.  *  Ibid. 


Stephen  Crane;  Frank  Norris  93 

was  but  twenty-one,  gave  a  horrible  picture  of  a  degenerate 
Irish  family  in  New  York  and  the  tragedy  of  its  eldest  daugh 
ter;  its  violent  plain  speaking  seemed  very  new  when  it  ap 
peared.  Crane's  great  success,  however,  attended  The  Red 
Badge  of  Courage  An  Episode  of  the  American  Civil  War 
(1895),  a  reconstruction,  by  a  man  who  at  the  time  of  writing 
knew  war  only  from  books,  of  the  mental  states  of  a  recruit 
when  first  under  fire.  A  greater  war  has  made  the  theme 
widely  familiar,  but  Crane's  performance  still  seems  more 
than  an  amazingly  clever  tour  de  force;  it  is  a  real  feat  of  the 
imagination.  Norris  had  larger  aims  than  Crane  and  on  the 
whole  achieved  more,  though  no  one  of  his  books  excels 
the  Red  Badge.  He  was  one  of  the  least  sectional  of  American 
novelists,  with  a  vision  of  his  native  land  which  attached 
him  to  the  movement,  then  under  discussion,  to  "continent 
alize  ' '  American  literature  by  breaking  up  the  parochial  habits 
of  the  local  colour  school.  He  had  a  certain  epic  disposition, 
tended  to  vast  plans,  and  conceived  trilogies.  His  "Epic  of 
the  Wheat"— The  Octopus  (1901),  The  Pit  (1903),  and  The 
Wolf  (never  written) — he  thought  of  as  the  history  of  the 
cosmic  spirit  of  wheat  moving  from  the  place  of  its  production 
in  California  to  the  place  of  its  consumption  in  Europe.  An 
other  trilogy  to  which  he  meant  to  give  years  of  work  would 
have  centred  about  the  battle  of  Gettysburg,  one  part  for  each 
day,  and  would  have  sought  to  present  what  Norris  considered 
the  American  spirit  as  his  Epic  of  the  Wheat  presented  an 
impersonal  force  of  nature.  Such  conceptions  explain  his 
grandiose  manner  and  the  passion  of  his  naturalism,  which  he 
was  even  willing  to  call  romanticism  provided  he  could  mean  by 
it  the  search  for  truths  deeper  than  the  surface  truths  of  ortho 
dox  realism.  He  had  a  strong  vein  of  mysticism ;  he  habitually 
occupied  himself  with  " elemental"  emotions.  His  heroes 
are  nearly  all  violent  men,  wilful,  passionate,  combative; 
his  heroines — thick-haired,  large-armed  women — are  endowed 
with  a  rich  and  deep,  if  slow,  vitality.  Love  in  Norris's  world 
is  the  mating  of  vikings  and  valkyries.  Love,  however,  is  not 
his  sole  concern.  The  Pacific  and  (California  novels,  Moran  of 
the  Lady  Letty  (1898),  Blix  (1899),  McTeague  (1899),  A  Man's 
Woman  (1900),  as  well  as  The  fyctopus,  are  full  of  ardently 
detailed  actualities;  The  Pit  is  a  valuable  representation  of 


94  The  Later  Novel 

a  "corner"  on  the  Chicago  Board  of  Trade.  In  all  these 
his  eagerness  to  be  truthful  gave  Norris  a  large  energy,  par 
ticularly  in  scenes  of  action,  but  his  speed  and  vividness  are 
not  matched  by  his  body  and  meaning. 

Much  the  same  thing  may  be  said  of  Jack  London  (1876- 
1916),  one  or  two  of  whose  novels  will  likely  outlast  his  short 
stories, x  important  as  they  were  in  his  best  days,  and  close  kin 
as  his  stories  and  novels  are  in  subjects,  style,  and  temper. 
Norris's  "elemental"  in  London  became  "abysmal"  passions. 
He  carried  the  cult  of  "red -blood"  to  its  logical,  if  not  ridicu 
lous,  extreme.  And  yet  he  has  a  sort  of  Wild-Irish  power  that 
will  not  go  unnoted.  John  Barleycorn  (1913)  is  an  amazingly 
candid  confession  of  London's  own  struggles  with  alcohol. 
Martin  Eden  (1909),  also  autobiographical,  though  assumed 
names  appear  in  it,  recounts  the  terrific  labours  by  which  in 
three  years  London  made  himself  from  a  common  sailor  into  a 
popular  author.  The  Sea-Wolf  (1904)  reveals  at  its  fullest  his 
appetite  for  cold  ferocity  in  its  record  of  the  words  and  deeds 
of  Wolf  Larsen,  a  Nietzschean,  Herculean,  Satanic  ship  captain, 
whose  incredible  strength  terminates  credibly  in  sudden  par 
alysis  and  impotence.  Most  popular  of  all,  and  best  equipped 
for  survival,  is  The  Call  of  the  Wild  (1903),  the  story  of  a  dog 
stolen  from  civilization  to  draw  a  sledge  in  Alaska,  eventually 
to  escape  from  human  control  and  go  back  to  the  wild  as  leader 
of  a  pack  of  wolves.  As  in  most  animal  tales,  the  narrative  is 
sentimentalized,  but  there  runs  through  it,  along  with  its 
deadly  perils  and  adventures,  an  effective  sensitiveness  to  the 
Alaskan  wastes,  a  robust,  moving,  genuine  current  of  poetry. 

A  real,  however  narrow,  gulf  separates  London  from  such 
colleagued  naturalists  as  Richard  Harding  Davis,  better  in 
short  stories2  than  in  novels,  and  often  romantic,  or  even  from 
David  Graham  Phillips  (1867-1911),  whose  bitter  war  upon 
society  and  ' '  Society ' '  culminated  in  the  two  volumes  of  Susan 
Lenox  (1917),  the  only  extended  portrait  of  an  American  cour 
tesan  No  one  of  them  all  had  quite  London's  boyish  energy, 
quite  his  romantic  audacity  in  naturalism.  And  the  tendency 
of  fiction  is  just  at  present  away  from  the  world  of  ' '  elemental " 
excitement  to  more  civil  phases  of  life,  a  newer  form  of  realism 
having  succeeded  alike  the  episode  of  naturalism  and  the 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi.  »  Ibid. 


Contemporary  Tendencies  95 

antithetical  episode  of  historical  romance.  At  the  same  time 
there  are  still  novels  of  many  types :  domestic  and  sentimental 
romances;  tales  of  wild  adventure;  stories  written  to  exploit 
a  single  character  in  the  tradition  of  F.  Hopkinson  Smith's1 
Colonel  Carter  of  Carter  smile  (1891),  Edward  Noyes  Westcott's 
David  Harum  (1898),  and  Owen  Wister's  The  Virginian 
(1905);  a  few  records  of  exotic  life  at  the  ends  of  the  earth; 
narratives,  nicely  skirting  salaciousness,  of  "fast"  New  York; 
affectionate,  idealized  portrayals,  as  in  the  work  of  James 
Lane  Allen  for  Kentucky,  of  particular  states  or  neighbour 
hoods.  But  no  tendency  quite  so  clearly  prevails  as  romance 
in  the  thirties,  sentimentalism  in  the  fifties,  realism  in  the 
eighties,  or  naturalism  at  the  turn  of  the  century. 
1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 


CHAPTER  XII 

Henry  James 

HENRY  JAMES  was  born  an  American  and  died  an 
Englishman.  He  might  never  have  formally  trans 
ferred  his  allegiance  had  it  not  been  for  the  War  and 
our  long  delay  in  espousing  the  Allied  cause.  He  became  a  Brit 
ish  subject  in  July,  1915.  The  transfer  had,  however,  been 
virtually  made  many  decades  earlier.  Of  the  two  ruling  pas 
sions  of  James,  one  was  surely  his  passion  for  "Europe."  Of 
this  infatuation  the  reader  will  find  the  most  explicit  record 
in  his  fragmentary  book  of  reminiscences,  The  Middle  Years 
(1917),  record  and  whimsical  apology  which  may  well  serve 
the  needs  of  other  Americans  pleading  indulgence  for  the  same 
offence.  James  loved  Europe,  as  do  all  "passionate  pilgrims," 
for  the  thick-crowding  literary  and  historical  associations 
which  made  it  seem  more  alive  than  the  more  bustling  scene 
this  side  the  water.  Going  to  breakfast  in  London  was  an 
adventure, — being  not,  as  at  Harvard,  merely  one  of  the  inci 
dents  of  boarding,  but  a  social  function,  calling  up  "the  ghosts 
of  Byron  and  Sheridan  and  Scott  and  Moore  and  Lockhart 
and  Rogers  and  tutti  quanti."  In  America,  James  had  never 
so  taken  breakfast  except  once  with  a  Boston  lady  frankly 
reminiscent  of  London,  and  once  with  Howells  fresh  from  his 
Venetian  post,  and  so  "all  in  the  Venetian  manner."  Every 
body  in  Victorian  London  had,  as  he  calls  it,  references — that 
is,  associations,  appeal  to  the  historic  imagination ;  and,  as  he 
humorously  confesses,  "a  reference  was  then,  to  my  mind, 
whether  in  a  person  or  an  object,  the  most  becoming  ornament 
possible."  It  was  "with  bated  breath"  that  he  approached 
the  paintings  of  Titian  in  the  old  National  Gallery;  and  when, 
in  the  presence  of  the  Bacchus  and  Ariadne,  he  became  aware, 

96 


His  Love  for  Art  97 

at  the  same  moment,  of  the  auburn  head  and  eager  talk  of 
Swinburne,  his  cup  for  that  day  ran  over.  With  the  best  of 
introductions  to  the  Rome  of  Story,  the  London  of  Lord 
Hough  ton,  the  highest  ambition  of  James  was  to  establish 
''connections"  of  his  own  with  a  world  in  which  everything 
so  bristled  with  connections;  and  it  is  he  who  lets  us  know 
with  what  joy  he  found  himself,  on  the  occasion  of  his  first 
visit  to  George  Eliot,  running  for  the  doctor  in  her  service, 
since  thereby  "a  relation  had  been  dramatically  determined." 

But  it  is  only  in  the  light  of  his  other  ruling  passion  that 
we  can  rightly  understand  the  force  of  his  passion  for  Europe. 
JEven  more  rooted  was  his  love  for  art,  the  art  of  representation. 
All  his  pilgriming  'n  London  and  elsewhere  was  by  way  of 
collecting  a  fund  of  material  to  draw  upon  ' '  as  soon  as  ever  one 
should  seriously  get  to  work."  And  is  it  surprising  that  he 
should  have  been  impressed  with  the  greater  eligibility  of  the 
foreign  material ;  that  his  impressions  of  New  York  and  Boston 
seemed  to  him  "negative"  or  "thin"  or  "flat"  beside  the  cor 
responding  impressions  of  London?  The  old  world  was  one 
which  had  been  lived  in  and  had  taken  on  the  expressive  char 
acter  of  places  long  associated  with  human  use.  It  was  not 
simply  the  individual  object  of  observation,  but  the  "cross-ref 
erences";  or,  again,  the  association  of  one  object  with  another 
and  with  the  past,  making  up  altogether  a  "composition." 
.Whatever  person  or  setting  caught  his  attention,  it  was  always 
because  it  "would  fall  into  a  picture  or  a  scene."  Of  the 
heroine  of  The  American,  a  young  French  woman  of  rank,  the 
hero  observed  that  she  was  "a  kind  of  historical  formation." 
And  along  with  his  material,  James  found  abroad  a  favourable 
air  in  which  to  do  his  work.  There  he  found  those  stimulating 
contacts,  there  he  could  observe  from  within  those  movements 
in  the  world  of  art,  which  were  of  such  prime  importance  for  his 
own  development.  Lambert  Strether,  in  The  Ambassadors, 
represents  the  deprivations  of  a  man  of  letters,  strikingly 
suggestive  in  many  ways  of  James  himself,  condemned  to  labour 
in  the  provincial  darkness  of  "Woollett,  Massachusetts." 

In  all  this  our  American  author  seems  identified  with 
anything  but  the  American  scene;  and  the  case  is  not  altered 
when  we  consider  his  stories  on  the  side  of  form.  His  form  is 
not  American,  nor  his  preoccupation  with  form.  It  is  as 

VOL.  Ill — 7 


98  Henry  James 

strictly  international  as  that  of  Poe.  James  was  a  profound 
admirer  of  Hawthorne;  but  so  was  he  an  admirer  of  Balzac 
\  and  of  George  Sand,  and  it  is  probably  to  later  models  than 
any  of  these  that  he  owes  whatever  is  most  characteristic  in 
his  technique.  There  is  at  any  rate  nothing  here  drawn  from 
American  sources  rather  than  from  European;  nothing  which 
we  can  claim  as  our  production. 

Yet  we  have  reasons  for  our  claim  upon  him.  This  very 
passion  for  Europe,  as  he  has  exhibited  it  in  himself  and  in  so 
many  of  liis  creatures,  this  European  " adventure"  of  Lam 
bert  Strether  and  Isabel  Archer  (of  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady) — 
what  more  purely  American  product  can  be  conceived  ?  Even 
to  the  conscientiousness  with  which  young  James  did  his 
London  sightseeing,  mindful  of  his  own  feeble  health,  which 
threatened  to  cut  it  short,  and  above  all  mindful  "that  what 
he  was  doing,  could  he  but  put  it  through,  would  be  inti 
mately  good  for  him ! ' ' 

Altogether  his  theme  turned  out  to  be  quite  as  much 
American  character  as  European  setting.  We  must  not 
forget  how  predominantly  his  novels,  and  how  frequently 
his  short  stories,  have  for  their  subject  Americans, — Americans 
abroad,  or  even  Americans  at  home  seen  in  the  light  of  foreign 
observation.  In  this  connection  the  novels  in  particular 
may  be  divided  into  three  groups,  falling  chronologically 
into  three  periods.  In  the  first  period,  extending  from  Roderick 
Hudson  to  The  Bostonians,  1875  to  1885,  the  leading  characters 
are  invariably  Americans,  though  the  scene  is  half  the  time 
abroad.  In  the  second  period,  from  The  Princess  Casamassima 
to  The  Sacred  Fount,  1885  to  1901,  the  novels  confine  them 
selves  rather  strictly  to  English  society.  In  the  third  period, 
from  The  Wings  of  the  Dove  to  the  novels  left  unfinished  at  the 
author's  death,  1902  to  1917,  James  returned  to  his  engross 
ing,  and  by  far  his  most  interesting,  theme  of  Americans  in 
Paris  or  Venice  or  London.  Not  a  very  original  contribution  to 
literature  is  the  American  scene  itself — the  New  York  of 
Washington  Square  (1881),  the  Boston  of  The  Europeans  (1878) 
and  The  Bostonians;  and  none  of  these  novels  was  included  by 
James  in  the  New  York  Edition.  His  American  settings  are 
but  palely  conceived;  and  his  figures  do  not  find  here -the 
proper  background  to  bring  them  out  and  set  off  their  special 


Americans  Abroad  99 

character.  But  the  crusading  Americans — variegated  types, 
comic  and  romantic — with  the  foreign  settings  in  which  they 
so  perfectly  find  themselves,  these  make  up  a  local  province  as 
distinct  in  colour  and  feature  as  those  of  Cable x  and  Bret  Harte, 2 
— a  province  quite  as  American,  in  its  way,  and  for  the  artist 
quite  as  much  of  a  trouvaille,  or  lucky  strike. 

These  Americans  abroad  fall  naturally  into  two  classes. 
The  first  are  treated  in  the  mildly  comic  vein,  as  examples 
of  American  crudeness  or  simplicity.  Such  are  the  unhappy 
Ruck  family  of  The  Pension  Beaurepas, — poor  Mr.  Ruck  who 
had  come  abroad  in  hopes  of  regaining  health  and  escaping 
financial  worries,  and  his  ladies  whose  interest  in  the  old  world 
is  confined  to  the  shops  where  money  can  be  spent.  Perhaps 
we  might  refer  to  this  class  Christopher  Newman,  the  self- 
possessed  and  efficient  American  business  man,  hero  of  The 
American  (1877);  though  in  his  case  the  comedy  of  character 
is  by  ho  means  broad,  and  is  strictly  subordinate  to  the  larger 
comedy  of  social  contrast.  In  general,  these  people  are  treated 
not  unkindly;  and  there  is  the  one  famous  instance  of  Daisy 
Miller,  in  which  the  fresh  little  American  girl  is  so  tenderly 
handled  as  to  set  tears  flowing — a  most  unusual  proceeding 
with  James.  Generally  the  Americans  emerge  from  the  inter 
national  comedy  with  the  reader's  esteem  for  sterling  virtues  not 
always  exhibited  by  the  more  sophisticated  Europeans.  In 
the  later  group  of  stories  in  particular,  the  American  character, 
presented  with  no  hint  of  comic  bias,  actually  shines  with  the 
lustre  of  a  superior  spiritual  fineness.  This  is  what  Rebecca 
West  has  in  mind  in  her  somewhat  impatient  reference  to 
James's  characters  as  American  old  maids,  or  words  to  that 
effect. 

And  here  we  have  the  very  heart  of  his  Americanism,  if  we 
may  make  bold  to  call  it  that.  There  is  something  in  James's 
estimate  of  spiritual  values  so  fine,  so  immaterial,  so  indifferent 
to  success  or  happiness  or  whatever  merely  practical  issues, 
as  to  suggest  nothing  so  much  as  the  transcendentalism  of 
Emerson,  the  otherworldliness  of  Hawthorne.  There  is  here  a 
psychology  not  of  Scott  or  Thackeray,  not  even  of  George 
Eliot,  still  less  of  any  conceivable  Continental  novelist;  and 
one  can  hardly  refer  it  to  any  but  a  New  England  origin. 
1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi.  2  Ibid. 


ioo  Henry  James 

William  James,  the  novelist's  grandfather,  was  an  Irishman 
settled  in  Albany.  He  was  described  in  a  New  York  news 
paper  of  1 832  as  ' '  the  Albany  business  man ' ' ;  and  he  laboured 
so  well  at  business  that  he  left  several  millions  to  be  divided 
among  twelve  heirs.  Otherwise  the  relatives  of  the  novelist 
were  quite  innocent  of  practical  affairs.  His  father,  Henry 
James,1  was  a  philosopher-clergyman,  a  friend  of  Emerson's, 
who  carried  with  him  everywhere  the  entire  works  of  Sweden- 
borg.  Henry  James,  Jr.,  was  born  15  April,  1843,  in  New 
York ;  but  he  went  to  Europe  as  a  babe  in  arms.  Two  years 
later,  still  in  long  clothes  and  waggling  his  feet,  he  noted  from 
the  carriage  window  ' '  a  stately  square  surrounded  with  high- 
roofed  houses  and  having  in  the  centre  a  tall  and  glorious 
column" — the  reader  will  recognize  the  Place  Vend6me. 
From  the  earliest  times,  in  New  York  and  Albany,  all  his 
conceptions  of  culture  had  a  transatlantic  origin.  The 
caricatures  of  Gavarni,  Nash's  lithographs  of  The  Mansions  of 
England,  the  novels  of  Dickens  read  aloud  in  the  family  circle, 
—these  fed  his  imagination.  He  and  his  brothers  went  regu 
larly  to  a  New  York  bookseller  for  a  boys'  magazine  published 
in  London.  Even  their  sense  of  a  "political  order"  was 
derived  from  Leech's  drawings  in  Punch.  Their  education 
was  amazingly  various  and  spasmodic, — better  adapted,  one 
might  suppose,  to  the  formation  of  novelists  than  of  philo 
sophers.  Dozens  of  private  schools  and  tutors  succeeded  one 
another  in  bewildering  rapidity  in  New  York,  not  to  speak  of 
later  instruction  in  Bonn  and  Geneva,  in  Paris  and  London. 

All  this  while  the  main  occupation  of  the  future  novelist 
was  the  contemplative  observation  of  character.  The  world  of 
Albany  and  New  York  was  a  world  not  of  vulgar  persons  but 
of  artistic  "values."  Everyone  was  interesting  as  a  "type": 
type  of  "personal  France"  or  of  French  "adventuress"  (refer 
ring  to  early  governesses),  type  of  orphan  cousins,  type  of  wild 
young  man.  Cousin  Henry  was  a  kind  of  Mr.  Dick,  cousin 
Helen  a  kind  of  Miss  Trotwood.  James's  account  in  A  Small 
Boy  and  Others  shows  him  in  those  early  days  a  mere  vessel  of 
impressions  suitable  to  the  uses  of  art.  All  this  was  fostered 
by  the  kind  of  discipline,  or  no  discipline,  maintained  by  their 
metaphysical  rather.  For  religion,  the  boys  went  to  all  the 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xvn. 


Early  Training.  191 

churches,  and,  we  gather,  in  much  the  spirit  in  which  they 
approached  any  other  aesthetic  experience.  As  for  livelihood, 
or  occupation,  the  father  was  always  inclined  to  discourage  any 
immediate  decision  upon  that  point,  lest  a  young  man  might 
prematurely  limit  the  development  of  his  inner  life.  We  are 
reminded  how  small  a  place  is  taken  in  the  stories  of  James  by 
what  men  do  to  earn  a  living.  In  America,  it  seemed,  there 
were — apart  from  the  unique  case  of  Daniel  Webster — but  two 
possible  destinies  for  a  young  man.  Either  he  went  into 
business  or  he  went  to  the  dogs.  But  the  immediate  family  and 
connections  of  James  were  always  aspiring  to  that  more  liberal 
foreign  order  in  which  was  offered  the  third  alternative  of  a 
person  neither  busy  nor  tipsy, — a  cultivated  person  of  leisure. 

In  1860  the  family  went  to  live  in  Newport,  so  that  the 
older  brother  might  work  in  the  studio  of  William  Morris 
Hunt;  and  Henry,  who  had  earlier  haunted  the  galleries  of 
Paris  with  his  brother,  welcomed  this  occasion  to  frequent  a 
place  devoted  to  the  making  of  pictures.  In  1862,  William 
being  at  Lawrence  Scientific  School,  Henry  entered  the  Har 
vard  Law  School;  still  noting,  in  boarding-house  or  lecture- 
room,  personalities,  chiaroscuro,  mise  en  scene,  more  than  the 
precedents  of  law.  The  Civil  War  was  the  one  distinctly 
American  fact  which  seems  to  have  penetrated  the  conscious 
ness  of  Henry  James.  While  he  was  prevented  by  lameness 
from  going  to  war  himself,  it  was  brought  home  to  him,  for 
one  thing,  by  the  participation  of  two  of  his  brothers.  But 
the  war,  like  everything  else,  was  followed  by  him,  however 
breathlessly,  as  a  spectacle  rich  in  artistic  values.  In  1864 
the  family  were  living  in  Boston,  and  from  1866  they  were 
definitely  settled  in  Cambridge,  William  entering  the  Harvard 
Medical  School  in  that  year;  and  in  these  days  the  young 
author  was  forming  excitingly  important  literary  connections. 
One  friendship  dating  from  this  time  was  that  with  E.  L.  God- 
kin,  editor  of  the  newly  founded  Nation. I  But  most  important 
no  doubt  was  that  with  the  Nortons  of  Shady  Hill,  who  later 
introduced  him  to  London  society. 

In  1870  died  the  person  to  whom  James  refers  with  the 
greatest  personal  affection,  his  cousin  Mary  Temple,  the  model 
for  Milly  Theale  in  The  Wings  of  the  Dove,  as  he  tells  us,  and 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xx. 


102  • ;•         .:  i    :  /.\  .Henry  James 

also — as  we  guess — for  Isabel  Archer  of  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady 
and  more  than  one  other  of  his  loveliest  American  women. 
Of  her  death  he  says  "we  felt  it  together  as  the  end  of  our 
youth."  So  far  he  brings  the  family  record  in  his  Notes  of  a 
Son  and  Brother  (1914).  Meanwhile  in  1869  occurred  the 
visit  to  London  recorded  in  The  Middle  Years.  To  1872 
belongs  a  perhaps  equally  memorable  visit  to  Italy.  And 
from  that  time  forward  until  his  death,  28  February,  1916, 
he  lived  abroad;  during  the  first  years  largely  in  Italy  and 
France  ("inimitable  France"  and  "incomparable  Italy"),  and 
then,  from  about  the  year  1880,  in  the  England  of  his  adop 
tion, — making  his  bachelor  home  in  London  or  in  the  old 
Cinque  Port  of  Rye.  But  he  continued  almost  to  the  end  to 
publish  his  novels  and  tales  in  the  great  American  magazines, 
so  that  his  first  appeal  was  generally  to  the  public  here. 

Evidences  of  the  honour  in  which  he  was  held  in  England 
were  the  Order  of  Merit  conferred  upon  him  at  New  Year's, 
1916;  and  his  portrait  by  Sargent,  undertaken  on  the  occasion 
of  his  seventieth  birthday,  at  the  invitation  of  some  two  hun 
dred  and  fifty  English  friends.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  War, 
none  was  more  enthusiastic  for  the  cause  of  the  Allies,  which 
was  associated  with  everything  he  held  most  precious.  His 
feeling  for  England  at  this  time,  on  looking  out  across  the 
channel  from  his  Sussex  home,  is  described  in  what  is  perhaps 
his  latest  piece  of  writing,  Within  the  Rim,  published  in  the 
Fortnightly  Review  in  August,  1917.  It  has  been  said  that  his 
mortal  illness  was  provoked  by  the  vigour  with  which  he  took 
up  the  work  of  relief  for  suffering  Belgium  and  France. 

James  began  his  literary  career  as  an  anonymous  contribu 
tor  of  reviews  to  The  North  American  Review  and  The  Nation; 
and  such  reviews  and  literary  news-letters  he  continued  to 
write  for  many  years.  Only  a  small  part  of  his  critical  writing 
has  appeared  in  book  form ;  and  it  still  remains  for  the  curious 
to  trace  the  development  of  his  literary  theory  from  the 
beginning.  His  books  of  fiction  were  frequently  supplemented, 
too,  with  books  of  impressions,  in  which  he  might  commune 
at  length  with  the  spirit  of  places, — English,  French,  American, 
Italian.  He  also  wrote  many  plays,  a  few  of  which  made 
brief  appearances  on  the  London  stage.  But  they  were 


His  First  Period  103 

"talky  "  and  untheatrical ;  and  he  succeeded  neither  in  purging 
the  theatre  of  the  commercialism  he  deprecated  nor  even  in 
taking  the  public  fancy  himself.  His  first  attempts  at  fiction 
were  printed  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly  and  The  Galaxy;  but  he 
hardly  emerges  as  an  author  of  account  before  the  appearance 
of  The  Passionate  Pilgrim  in  1871.  His  first  important  novel 
was  Roderick  Hudson,  published  in  The  Atlantic  in  1875.  His 
first  and  only  approach  to  popularity,  whether  in  long  or  short 
story,  was  made  by  Daisy  Miller  in  1878.  The  New  York 
Edition  of  his  novels  and  tales,  published  during  the  years 
1907  to  1909,  is  of  the  greatest  interest  because  of  the  extended 
discussion  of  his  own  work  and  the  account  of  his  imaginative 
processes  found  in  the  Prefaces.  It  is,  however,  very  far  from 
being  a  complete  collection  even  of  his  works  of  fiction.  It  is 
simply  the  choice  made  by  James  at  that  late  date,  and  accord 
ing  to  his  taste  as  it  had  then  developed,  of  such  of  his  stories 
as  he  wished  to  be  known  by.  It  remains  to  be  seen  how  far 
posterity  will  submit  to  his  judgment  in  the  matter. 

The  threefold  grouping  of  his  novels  already  suggested  was 
in  connection  with  the  treatment  of  American  themes.  In 
reference  to  form  and  method  a  more  illuminating  division 
would  be  one  of  two  periods:  first,  Roderick  Hudson  to  The 
Tragic  Muse,  1875-1890;  and  second,  The  Spoils  of  Poynton  to 
The  Sense  of  the  Past,  1896-1917. 

In  the  novels  of  the  first  group,  he  includes,  in  general, 
more  material  than  in  the  later  ones,  more  incident,  a  greater 
number  of  characters,  a  more  extended  period  of  time;  and  he 
treats  his  material  in  the  larger,  more  open,  more  lively  manner 
of  the  main  English  tradition.  He  also  chooses,  in  the  earlier 
period,  what  may  be  considered  more  ambitious  themes  in 
the  matter  of  psychology.  In  Roderick  Hudson,  for  example, 
he  undertakes  to  trace  the  degeneration  of  a  man  of  genius,  a 
young  American  sculptor,  when  given  the  freedom  of  the 
artistic  life  in  Rome.  This  ey^lutipnary — or  revolutionary— 
process  of  character,  suggestive  of  George  Eliot,  is  a  " larger 
orderThaFTIePTOcdd  ever  have  taken  on  in  the  later  period .  In 
The  Tragic  Muse  he  reverts  to  the  theme  of  the  artistic  tempera 
ment — this  time  in  disagreement  with  the  world  of  affairs; 
and  he  develops  it  by  means  of  two  great  interrelated  stories, 
one  dealing  with  an  actress,  one  with  a  painter.  In  the  later 


104  Henry  James 

years  he  would  not  have  undertaken  thus  to  tell  two  stories  at 
the  same  time;  and  perhaps  the  artistic  temperament  itself 
would  have  seemed  to  him  too  ambitious  a  theme.  In  the 
earlier  period,  again,  we  find  him  sometimes  treating  subjects 
touching  on  political  or  the  more  practical  social  problems, 
though  indeed  his  interest  was  never  primarily  in  the  problems. 
The  Bostonians  is  a  somewhat  satirical  study,  at  one  and  the 
same  time,  of  the  Boston  character  and  of  feminism  ;  while  in 
The  Princess  Casamassima  the  leading  persons  are  revolution 
ary  socialists,  and  political  murder  lurks  in  the  background. 
Probably  the  best,  as  well  as  the  best  liked,  of  the  earlier 
novels  is  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady  (1881),  which  records  at 
length  the  European  initiation  of  a  generous-souled  American 


In  the  course  of  six  years  between  the  first  and  second 
periods  no  novel  of  James  was  published;  but  during  that 
interim  came  the  culmination  of  his  long  activity  as  a  short- 
story  writer.  It  was  his  tendency  always  to  subordinate  incident 
to  character,  to  subordinate  character  as  such  to  situation  —  or 
the  relations  among  the  characters  ;  and  in  situation  or  charac 
ter,  to  prefer  something  rather  out  of  the  ordinary,  some  aspect 
or  type  not  too  obviously  interesting  but  calling  for  insight  and 
subtlety  in  the  interpretation.  Good  examples,  in  the  short 
story,  of  this  predilection  are  The  Pupil,  The  Real  Thing,  and 
The  Altar  of  the  Dead,  all  appearing  in  the  early  nineties;  and 
a  little  later,  The  Beldonald  Holbein  and  A  Turn  of  the  Screw, 
most  haunting  of  ghost  stories.  In  The  Beldonald  Holbein 
the  beautiful  great  lady  has  chosen  for  her  companion  a 
supposedly  unattractive  middle-aged  American  woman,  who 
will  admirably  serve  as  a  foil  to  her  beauty.  But  certain 
painters  of  her  acquaintance  having  discovered  that  the  foil  is 
herself  remarkably  "  beautiful"  —  that  is,  distinguished,  signi 
ficant  of  feature,  a  subject  worthy  of  Holbein  —  it  becomes 
necessary  to  send  her  back  home  and  get  another  companion 
with  less  character  engraved  upon  her  countenance.  How  one 
of  the  artists  gets  his  revenge  by  painting  Lady  Beldonald 
in  all  the  splendour  of  her  mediocrity  is  not  the  point  of  interest  ; 
the  point  of  interest  is  the  fine  discrimination  shown  by  artist 
—  and  author,  and  reader  —  in  evidence  of  their  superior  good 
taste. 


His  Masters  in  Art  r°5 

Each  tale  of  James  is  thus  an  "initiation  "  into  some  social 
or  artistic  or  spiritual  value  not  obvious  to  the  vulgar.  And 
each  tale  is  a  quiet  picture,  a  social  study,  rather  than  the 
smart  "anecdote  prescribed  by  our  doctors  of  the  "short- 
story."  James  is  not  rigorous  in  his  limitation  of  the  short 
story  to  the  magazine  length ;  so  that  his  tales  are  as  likely  to 
take  the  form  of  the  more  leisurely  nouvelle  as  of  the  brief  and 
sketchy  conte.  And  so  it  was  not  surprising  to  find  a  tale 
intended  originally  for  a  magazine  short  story  enlarging  itself 
by  insensible  degrees  into  what  is  practically  a  novel.  Such 
was  the  case  with  The  Spoils  ofPoynton,  one  of  his  finest  stories, 
which  has  the  length  of  a  novel,  together  with  the  restricted 
subject-matter,  the  continuity,  and  economy  of  the  short 
story. 

But  these  traits,  it  is  clear,  had  already  grown  to  be  James's 
ideals  for  a  narrative  of  whatever  length.  They  were  the 
ideals  of  many  of  the  foreign  novelists  whose  personal  influence 
had  swayed  him  in  Paris ;  and  to  a  considerable  extent  those  of 
George  Eliot,  whose  influence  upon  him  must  have  been  me 
diate,  working  through  her  French  imitators,  as  well  as  em 
anating  directly  from  her  own  work.  More  and  more,  serious 
novelists  were  denying  themselves  the  breezy  and  picturesque 
variety  of  materials,  the  broad  free  stroke,  of  the  old  masters,  in 
favour  of  a  dramatic  limitation,  a  dramatic  closeness  of  weave, 
a  scientific  minuteness  of  detail,  an  intimate  psychological 
notation,  and  a  pictorial  (as  distinguished  from  picturesque) 
consistency  of  tone, — all  of  which  we  find  in  their  extremest 
development  in  the  later  novels  of  James.  This  is  what 
makes  the  international  character  of  his  art.  Note  should 
be  taken,  of  course,  of  a  certain  fussiness  and  long-windedness, 
as  well  as  a  certain  tendency  to  the  abstract,  which  are  partly 
to  be  set  down  to  the  score  of  personal  idiosyncrasy.  But  in 
general  he  is  clearly  following  the  ideals  of  George  Eliot,  of 
Flaubert,  of  Turgenev.  Perhaps  too  we  should  admit  the 
suggestion  of  F.  M.  Hueffer,  who  would  trace  back  the  lineage 
of  James,  through  Stendhal  and  other  French  writers,  ulti 
mately  to  Richardson,  the  early  master  of  the  technique  of 
manifold  fine  strokes,  of  the  close  and  sentimental  study  of 
souls. 

Along  with    The  Spoils  of  Poynton  may  be  mentioned, 


io6  Henry  James 

among  the  later  novels,  The  Sacred  Fount  (1901)  and  What 
Maisie  Knew  (1897)  as  partaking  somewhat  of  the  nature  of 
long  short  stories.  What  Maisie  Knew  is,  by  the  way,  in  a 
class  by  itself,  not  merely  for  reasons  of  technique  too  special 
to  be  considered  here,  but  also  by  reason  of  the  great  charm  of 
the  little  girl, — so  naive,  so  earnest,  so  much  a  lady  and  so 
much  a  girl,  whose  experience  of  evil  is  the  subject  of  the  story. 

For  the  full-fledged  novels  of  the  later  period,  it  will  suffice 
to  state  briefly  the  themes  of  The  Awkward  Age  (1899)  and  The 
Golden  Bowl  (1904) — without  prejudice,  however,  to  the  special 
claims  of  The  Ambassadors,  the  novel  considered  by  James 
himself  to  be  his  most  perfect  work  of  art.  The  Awkward  Age 
is  concerned  with  the  adjustment  called  for  in  a  certain  London 
circle  by  the  emergence  of  thejeune  fille  and  the  consideration 
due  her  innocence  of  the  world.  The  adjustments  prove  to  be 
very  extensive,  but  almost  wholly  subjective,  and  leaving 
things  very  much  where  they  were  before  so  far  as  any  outward 
signs  go.  The  book  is  almost  literally  all  talk, — the  jalk  QJ_ 
people  the  most  "civilized"  and  "modern,  "people  the  most 
shy  of  "vulgarity, "  who  have  ever  been  put  in  a  book.  It  is  a 
fascinating  performance — for  those  who  have  the  patience  to 
read  it.  The  Golden  Bowl  is  a  study  of  a  theme  not  unlike 
that  of  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady.  It  is  the  story  of  an  American 
girl  who  marries  an  Italian  prince,  and  the  strategy  by  which 
she  wins  his  loyal  affection.  The  time  covered  is  much  shorter 
than  that  in  the  Portrait,  the  important  characters  only  about 
half  as  many,  the  amount  of  action  much  smaller :  and  there  is 
little  change  of  scene  as  compared  with  the  earlier  novel. 
The  length  of  the  book  is  about  the  same;  and  the  space  saved 
by  these  various  economies  is  devoted  to  the  leisurely  develop 
ment  of  a  single  situation  as  it  shaped  itself  gradually  in  the 
minds  of  those  participating,  the  steady  deepening  of  a  sense 
of  mystery  and  misgiving,  the  tightening  of  emotional  tension, 
to  a  degree  that  means  great  drama  for  all  readers  for  whom  it 
does  not  mean  a  very  dull  book. 

For  many  readers  it  certainly  means  a  very  dull  book.  In 
this  recipe  for  a  story  almost  everything  has  been  discarded 
which  was  the  staple  of  the  earlier  English  novel,  even  of 
George  Eliot, — exciting  incident,  dramatic  s'tuation,  highly- 
coloured  character  and  dialogue,  humour,  philosophy,  social 


His  Latest  Method  J<>7 

comment.  Indeed,  we  may  almost  say  the  story  itself  has 
been  thrown  out  with  the  rest.  For  in  the  later  novels  and 
tales  of  James  there  is  not  so  much  a  story  told  as  a  situation 
revealed;  revealed  to  the  characters  and  so  to  us;  and  the 
process  of  gradual  revelation,  the  calculated  " release"  of  one 
item  after  another — that  is  the  plot.  It  is  as  if  we  were 
present  at  the  painting  of  a  picture  by  a  distinguished  artist, 
as  if  we  were  invited  to  follow  the  successive  strokes  by  which 
this  or  that  detail  of  his  conception  was  made  to  bloom  upon 
the  canvas;  and  when  the  last  bit  of  oil  had  been  applied,  he 
should  turn  to  us  and  say  "Now  you  have  heard  Bordello's 
storyjtoldJ/  Some  of  us  would  be  satisfied  with  the  excite 
ment  of  having  assisted  at  such  a  function,  considering  also 
the  picture  which  had  thus  come  into  being.  Others,— and 
it  is  human  nature,  no  doubt, — would  exclaim  in  vexed 
bewilderment  "But  7  have  heard  no  story  told!" 

_The-stories  of  James  tend  to  be  records  of  seeing  rather 
-than— of  -doing.  The  characters  are  more  like  patients  than 
agents;  their  business  seems  to  be  to  register  impressions;  to 
receive  illumination  rather  than  to  make  up  their  minds  and 
set  about  deeds.  But  this  is  a  way  of  conceiving  our  human 
business  by  no  means  confined  to  these  novels;  is  it  not  more 
or  less  characteristic  of  the  whole  period  in  which  James  wrote? 
One  passes  by  insensible  degrees  from  the  world  of  Renan  to 
that  of  Pater  and  Swinburne,  and  thence  to  that  of  Oscar 
Wilde  and  of  writers  yet  living,  in  whom  the  cult  of  impres 
sions  has  been  carried  to  lengths  yet  more  extreme. 

Among  all  these  names  the  most  significant  here  seems 
to  be  that  of  Walter  Pater,  whose  style  and  tone  of  writing- 
corresponding  to  his  intellectual  quality  and  bias — more 
nearly  anticipate  the  style  of  James  than  do  those  of  any 
other  writer,  English  or  French.  It  does  not  matter  that 
Pater's  subject  is  the  art  of  the  past  and  James's  the  life  of 
the  present.  No  two  writers  were  ever  more  concerned  with 
mere  "impressions,"  and  impressions  mean  for  them  dis 
criminations,  intimate  impressions,  subtle  and  finely  sym 
pathetic  interpretations.  None  ever  found  it  necessary,  in 
order  to  render  the  special  quality  of  their  impressions,  to  try 
them  in  so  many  different  lights,  to  accompany  their  state- 


io8  Henry  James 

ments  with  so  many  qualifications  and  reservations :  impulses 
giving  rise  to  sentences  more  curiously  complex  and  of  longer 
breath  than  were  ever  penned  by  writers  of  like  pith  and 
moment.  They  were  both  of  them  averse  to  that  raising  of  the 
voice,  that  vehement  or  emphatic  manner,  characteristic  of 
the  earlier  Victorians  and  supposed  to  be  associated  with 
strong  feelings  and  firm  principles.  These  reasonable  and 
well-bred  writers,  if  they  ever  had  strong  feelings  or  firm 
principles,  could  be  trusted  to  dissimulate  them  under  a  tone 
of  quiet  urbanity.  They  abhorred  abrupt  transitions  and 
violent  attitudes.  They  proceed  ever  in  their  discourse 
smoothly  and  without  marked  inflection,  softly,  as  among 
tea-tables,  or  like  persons  with  weak  hearts  who  must  guard 
themselves  against  excitement.  There  is  a  kind  of  hieratic 
gentleness  and  fastidiousness, — and  yet  withal  a  hint  of  breath 
less  awe,  of  restrained  enthusiasm, — in  the  manner  in  which 
they  celebrate  the  mysteries  of  their  religion  of  culture,  their 
religion  of  art. 

This,  we  say  of  James,  is  anything  but  American,  indige 
nous  ;  this  is  the  Zeitgeist;  this  is  the  spirit  of  England  in  the 
"aesthetic  nineties"  reacting  against  the  spirit  of  England  in 
the  time  of  Carlyle.  But  then  we  think  of  the  "passionate 
pilgrimage"  of  Isabel  Archer  and  the  others;  we  think  of 
James's  Middle  Years;  we  think,  it  may  be,  of  ourselves  and 
eastward  prostrations  of  our  own.  And  we  realize  that  what 
the  romancer  has  conjured  up  is  a  world  not  strange  to  our 
experience.  His  genius  is  not  the  less  American  for  present 
ing  us,  before  all  things,  this  vision  of  a  bride  rushing  into  the 
arms  of  her  bridegroom :  vision  of  the  mystic  marriage  (shall 
we  say?)  of  new- world  faith  and  old-world  culture. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Later    Kssayists 

WHEN,  speaking  to  his  classmates  on  their  graduation 
from  college,  William  Ellery  Channing1  made  the 
address  entitled  The  Present  Age  (1798),  the  note 
that  he  uttered  was  one  that  thenceforth  reverberated  through 
out  our  national  life  and  literature.  It  showed  affiliation  with 
the  French  Revolution,  and  with  the  England  of  Burns,  Shelley, 
and  Wordsworth ;  and  notable  is  the  emphasis  on  the  possibility 
of  all  human  progress,  not  alone  American  progress,  and  on  the 
importance  of  that  culture  which  shall  be  shared  by  all  classes 
of  mankind.  To  material  objects  Channing  gave  their  due,  but 
regarded  them  merely  as  the  manifestations  of  character  and 
of  power  that  have  in  higher  fields  their  most  inspiring  repre 
sentation  ;  and  beauty  was  for  him  a  vast  treasury  of  benedic 
tion  wherefrom  he  wished  his  fellow  men  to  draw  the  priceless 
blessings  available  to  the  poorest  purse.  Thus  the  essay  on 
Self -Culture,  written  as  an  address  in  1838,  is  a  composition  to 
which  the  writings  of  Emerson,  Curtis,  Higginson,  Mabie,  and 
later  authors  owe  a  decided,  even  if  in  some  cases  unconscious, 
debt — the  practical  and  poetical  blending  of  humanity  with 
the  humanities. 

As  Channing  was  the  earliest  in  that  firmament  of  lecturer- 
essayists  where  Emerson  shone  as  the  most  benignant  star,  so 
Nathaniel  Parker  Willis2  is  the  prototype  of  later  semi-literary 
American  journalists.  Now,  the  mark  of  the  journalist,  the  trait 
which  surely  establishes  both  his  immediate  success  and  his  final 
oblivion,  is  the  intentness  of  seizure  on  what  the  present  can  give, 
in  swift,  exciting,  easily  apprehensible  interest.  It  was  always 
the  present  that  fascinated  Willis;  and,  save  in  fleeting  mo- 
JSee  Book  II,  Chap.  vm.  a  Ibid.,  Chap.  in. 

109 


no  Later  Essayists 

ments  of  early  days,  his  vision  did  not  seek  the  future  with  any 
sincere  scrutiny.  Revelling  in  personalities,  he  is  expository 
only  secondarily,  if  at  all ;  and  inspiring  never.  The  writer  of 
our  own  time  who  works  up  an  interview  with  some  man  of 
mark  is  following  Willis  not  alone  in  his  interest  in  the  super 
ficialities  of  personality,  but  often  in  the  very  tricks  of  style, 
varying  from  gaudy  metaphor  to  the  epithet  that  has  the  tang 
of  the  unexpected.  Our  journalists,  by  and  large,  remain  lesser 
members  of  the  Willis  tribe. 

Still  a  third  writer,  Washington  Irving, r  exerted  a  notable 
influence  as  the  originator  of  a  literary  form  which,  for  want 
of  a  better  phrase,  might  be  called  the  story -essay,  wherein 
the  narrative  element  runs  its  gentle  course  over  a  bed  of 
personal  reflections  and  descriptive  comment  of  individual 
flavour.  He  had  a  whole  school  of  followers, 2  and  even  Haw 
thorne3  for  a  time  moved  among  them ;  while  two  more  natural 
inheritors  of  his  moods  of  tender  sentiment  and  gentle  satire 
are  Donald  Grant  Mitchell  (1822-1908)  and  George  William 
Curtis,  with  whom  the  history  of  our  later  essayists  may  well 
begin. 

The  two  volumes,  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor  (1850)  and  Dream 
Life  (1851),  which  Mitchell,  as  a  young  writer,  issued  under 
the  pseudonym  of  Ik  Marvel,  are  volumes  that  strike  the  same 
chords  whose  artistically  modulated  music  resounds  in  so  much 
of  Irving,  to  whom  the  latter  volume  was  dedicated;  while  in 
The  Lorgnette,  or  Studies  of  the  Town  (1850)  we  have  a  series 
of  papers  directly  modelled  on  Salmagundi.  These  sketches, 
despite  the  facile  manner  of  their  kindly  satire,  belong  in  the 
topical  realm  of  ephemera,  and  are  of  interest  mainly  to  the 
historical  critic,  who,  harking  back  to  the  days  of  The  Spec 
tator  and  The  Taller,  finds  in  them  another  nexus  between 
English  and  American  literature.  Not  so,  however,  can  we 
dismiss  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor  and  Dream  Life.  Their  hold  on 
the  affections  of  later  generations  is  secure  despite  that  naive 
sentimentality  frequently  displayed  by  American  literature  in 
the  period  just  preceding  the  Civil  War.  Both  these  books 
present  a  series  of  pictures  in  the  imaginary  life  of  their  author, 
and  there  is  a  general  adherence  to  the  concept  of  life  as  a 
succession  of  the  seasons.  This  parallel  does  not,  however, 
1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  iv.  *  Ibid.,  Chap.  vn.  '  Ibid.,  Chap.  XL 


Ik  Marvel  m 

lead  into  paths  of  wintry  regret.  We  find  even  December 
logic  taking  on  a  golden  hue  in  such  a  sentence  as  this  from 
the  Reveries:  ''Affliction  has  tempered  joy,  and  joy  adorned 
affliction.  Life  and  all  its  troubles  have  become  distilled  into  a 
holy  incense  rising  ever  from  your  fireside — an  offering  to  your 
household  Gods. "  '  *  And  what  if  age  comes ' ' — Mitchell  writes 
further  on,  in  the  vein  of  Browning's  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra — "what 
else  proves  the  wine?  It  is  but  retreating  towards  the  pure 
sky  depths."  The  note  of  joy  in  the  springtime  of  life,  the 
accent  of  sympathy  for  young  griefs  as  well  as  young  loves,  echo 
from  these  charming  pages;  while  the  ingenuousness  of  Ik 
Marvel's  sentiments  is  embedded  in  an  old-fashioned  form  of 
sentimental  phraseology  which  brings  a  smile  to  the  lips  of  the 
sophisticated  critic.  But  after  all  it  is  the  smile  in  the  reader's 
heart  that  attests  the  lasting  human  appeal  of  both  the  Reveries 
and  Dream  Life.  These  books  were  written  while  their  author 
was  still  in  his  twenties,  and  they  have  the  immaturity,  both  of 
technique  and  philosophy,  which  precedes  the  labour  of  the 
craftsman  and  the  experiences  of  the  man;  yet  they  have  also, 
with  the  aroma  of  youth,  that  even  subtler  fragrance — the  gift 
of  the  gods  to  all  who  comprehend  the  value  of  the  dreaming 
hour. 

There  are  two  elements  in  these  works  secondary  in  interest 
only  to  the  major  themes  of  love,  sorrow,  and  ambition.  One  is 
the  immediate  affection  for  nature,  nowhere  more  beautifully 
expressed  than  in  this  springtime  picture:  "The  dandelions  lay 
along  the  hillocks  like  stars  in  a  sky  of  •  green."  The  other 
note  is  of  love  for  old  books.  These  themes  are  repeatedly 
found  in  Mitchell's  later  writings;  and  My  Farm  of  Edgewood 
(1863) — Edgewood  was  his  country  home  near  New  Haven 
—began  a  series  of  volumes  among  the  earliest  of  a  steadily 
increasing  department  of  American  literature  revolving  around 
agricultural  and  rural  themes. 

Mitchell's  own  experiences  with  the  soil  of  his  native  Con 
necticut  are,  in  My  Farm  of  Edgewood,  recounted  with  the  serious 
ness  of  the  scientific  farmer  and  the  grace  of  the  man  of  letters. 
In  Wet  Days  at  Edgewood  (1865)  his  pleasant  discourse  ranges 
from  ancient  country  poets  to  the  latest  practical  studies  of  soil 
cultivation ;  while  in  the  yet  later  volume  Rural  Studies,  with 
Hints  for  Country  Places  (1867)  he  continues  in  confidential 


ii2  Later  Essayists 

mood  to  the  widening  circles  of  those  readers  whose  love  for 
country  life  his  own  writings  had  in  no  small  measure  developed. 
Thus  Mitchell  figures  in  a  very  personal  way  in  the  large  group 
of  American  writers  on  nature,  and  deserves  recognition  as  an 
influential  pioneer  in  directing,  with  the  urbanity  of  the  scholar, 
the  attention  of  his  countrymen  to  non -urban  delights.  This 
point  is  emphasized  because,  all  told,  American  essayists  have, 
in  their  treatment  of  nature,  covered  an  exceptionally  wide 
range,  and  approached  this  theme,  both  as  to  style  and  inter 
pretation,  in  ways  that  repay  the  most  interested  study: 
Audubon, x  the  important  naturalist,  indulging  in  exaggerated 
poetical  rhetoric  in  acquainting  us  with  the  habits  of  birds; 
Emerson2  and  Thoreau,3  not  impervious  to  the  interest  of 
nature's  details,  yet  winning  from  them  the  highest  spiritual 
sustenance  for  the  world  of  men;  Agassiz4  and  Warner  and 
Mabie  and  Burroughs  and  John  Muir,  approaching  each  ac 
cording  to  his  temperament  and  qualifications  this  ever  boun 
tiful  theme.  From  some  of  these  authors  we  derive  knowledge 
concerning  animal  life  and  plant  life ;  from  others,  messages  of 
the  intimate  relationship  between  human  life  and  the  great 
world  of  nature.  But  Mitchell,  in  his  Edgewood  writings, 
stands  as  one  whose  main  interest  sprang  from  the  soil  itself. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  long  life,  Mitchell  wrote  four  volumes 
on  English  Lands,  Letters,  and  Kings  (1890),  and  two  on  Ameri 
can  Lands  and  Letters  (1897-99).  Here  are  many  shrewd  ob 
servations  concerning  his  contemporaries,  as  well  as  pungent 
estimates,  often  mingled  with  humour,  of  the  writings  and 
character  of  earlier  authors;  but  these  books,  with  their  wealth 
of  pictures,  were  intended  for  the  public  at  large,  and  cannot 
be  considered  as  original  contributions  to  critical  literature. 
In  them  we  have  the  somewhat  obvious  fruit  of  his  travels, 
experiences,  and  readings,  but  in  a  manner  that  has  less  flavour 
than  the  gleanings  of  travel,  published  in  far  younger  days, 
such  as  A  New  Sheaf  from  the  Old  Fields  of  Continental  Europe 
(1847).  Those  earlier  descriptive  papers  and  legends,  so 
immediately  related  to  Irving's  Tales  of  a  Traveller,  are  more  in 
accord  with  Mitchell's  fame  as  the  author  of  the  Reveries  and 
Dream  Life,  and  through  them  Mitchell  is  most  pleasantly 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xxvi.  »  See  Book  II,  Chap.  ix. 

3  Ibid.,  Chap.  x.  4  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xxvi. 


Ik  Marvel  113 

affiliated  with  many  other  American  essayists — Emerson, 
Bryant, *  Bayard  Taylor, 2  Curtis — who  made  their  travels  the 
basis  of  a  great  body  of  work  that  varies  from  the  decorous 
pace  of  well-phrased  description  to  graceful  flights  of  fancy 
and  even  to  soarings  of  the  creative  imagination. 

Before  we  leave  Mitchell  there  is,  however,  to  be  noted  one 
point  which  differentiates  him  from  the  majority  of  American 
essayists.  Again  like  Irving,  whose  life  Mitchell's  parallels  in 
details  of  ill  health,  early  travels  abroad,  the  study  and  abandon 
ment  of  law,  and  the  tenure  of  official  position  in  Europe, 
the  author  of  Dream  Life  held  to  the  belief  that  a  writer  is  not 
called  upon  to  take  an  active  part  in  the  great  political  and 
social  questions  of  his  day,  if  he  feels  that  he  can  best  express 
himself  and,  in  the  long  run,  most  effectively  serve  mankind 
through  adherence  to  his  literary  art  along  the  lines  of  his 
own  predilections.  Irving,  of  course,  was  at  one  time  most 
adversely  criticized  by  his  countrymen  for  jurt  such  an  attitude, 
and  his  protracted  stay  abroad  was  misconstrued  as  a  form  of 
national  renegadism.  Mitchell  escaped  hostile  comment  for 
his  general  abstention  from  participation  in  those  public  topics, 
ranging  from  the  abolition  of  slavery  and  the  preservation  of 
the  Union  to  Civil  Service  reform,  woman  suffrage,  national 
copyright,  and  other  themes  of  social  betterment  that  led 
Whittier, 3  Lowell,4  Curtis,  and  Higginson,  and  indeed  almost 
all  the  leading  American  poets  and  essayists  for  the  last  fifty 
years,  to  become,  at  times,  propagandists.  This  absence  of 
the  outright  didactic  note  is  a  decided  characteristic  of  Ik  Mar 
vel,  leaving  him  none  the  less  creditably  in  the  brotherhood 
of  those  authors  whose  message  remains  abidingly  sweet  and 
wholesome. 

The  most  remarkable  blending  of  the  man  of  letters  and 
the  devoted  public  servant  among  American  authors  is  mani 
fested  in  the  life  and  writings  of  George  William  Curtis  (1824- 
92).  In  all  the  literary  essays  and  addresses  of  Curtis,  and 
in  even  the  briefest  of  his  papers  for  "The  Easy  Chair,"  is 
apparent  his  incomparably  suave  diction ;  but  here,  too,  is  that 
firmness  of  thought  clothing  his  civic  aspirations  in  the  im 
pregnable  armour  of  dauntless  and  logical  convictions.  And 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  v.  a  See  Book  III,  Chaps,  x  and  xiv. 

3  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xm.  4  Ibid.,  Chap.  xxiv. 


VOL. ;n — 1 


ii4  Later  Essayists 

how  graciously  the  two  great  streams  in  our  essay  literature — 
the  Puritan  stream  softened  by  the  elemental  thought  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  with  Channing  as  its  fountainhead, 
and  the  genial  flow  of  benign  art,  with  Irving  as  its  fountain- 
head — have  their  confluence  in  Curtis!  "Honor,"  he  writes, 
"is  conscious  and  willing  loyalty  to  the  highest  inward 
leading.  It  is  the  quality  which  cannot  be  insulted";  thus 
expressing  the  thought  which  underlay  the  memorable  phrase 
of  a  later  essayist,  Woodrow  Wilson,  President  of  the  United 
States.  One  recalls  in  this  connection  another  of  Curtis 's 
sentences:  "Reputation  is  favorable  notoriety  as  distinguished 
from  fame,  which  is  permanent  approval  of  great  deeds  and 
noble  thoughts  by  the  best  intelligence  of  mankind." 

The  literary  career  of  Curtis  falls  into  two  parts.  Born  in 
Providence,  he  went,  as  a  boy,  to  New  York,  where,  for  a  short 
while,  he  held  a  clerkship.  His  first  direct  connection  with 
other  men  of  letters  came  with  his  sojourn  in  1842  at  Brook 
Farm ;  and  this  was  followed  by  travels  in  Europe  and  in  Egypt 
and  Syria.  The  result  was  a  series  of  delightful  books,  based 
on  letters  that  he  had  sent  to  the  New  York  Tribune;  and  in 
them  we  find  Curtis  giving  full  and  original  vent  to  his  nimble 
fancy  and  his  graceful  descriptive  powers.  The  Nile  Notes  of  a 
Howadji  (1856),  The  Howadji  in  Syria  (1852),  and  Lotus  Eaters 
(1852)  are  thus  delectable  resting  places  for  the  literary  student 
who  seeks  to  cover  the  territory  of  our  travel  literature.  In 
Potiphar  Papers  (1853),  Curtis  resorted  to  our  chief  city,  con 
tinuing  the  Salmagundi  tradition  of  local  satire,  not  without 
immediate  evidence  of  the  influence  of  Thackeray;  chastizing 
with  somewhat  gentle  blows  of  the  moralist's  whip  the  more 
obvious  faults  of  a  community  too  much  given  to  ostentation ; 
and  pointing  with  no  very  stern  finger  at  the  social  excres 
cences  of  his  (and  other)  times.  But  a  more  individual  flavour 
comes  to  the  front  in  Prue  and  I  (1856),  one  of  the  most  charm 
ing  of  American  books,  wherein  the  poor  man  endowed  with  the 
gift  of  imagination  is  shown  to  be  a  far  richer  and  infinitely 
more  sympathetic  figure  than  the  millionaire  whose  festivities 
he  contemplates  with  the  eye  of  a  philosopher  whom  love  has 
blessed.  About  this  same  period,  Curtis  began  those  papers 
which  made  the  "Editor's  Easy  Chair"  in  Harper's  Monthly  a 
national,  as  well  as  a  literary,  institution;  and  he  began,  also, 


George  William  Curtis  115 

his  public  lectures,  which,  till  the  time  of  his  death  some  forty 
years  later,  were  so  beneficially  to  affect  the  national  life. 
Prior  to  1 860  Curtis  was  almost  exclusively  a  man  of  let 
ters;  and  had  not  civic  duties  spoken  to  him  with  peremptory 
voice,  his  early  work  bids  us  believe  that  he  would  have  rounded 
out  his  career  with  many  volumes  of  the  most  graciously 
conceived  and  gracefully  expressed  essays  and  fiction.  But 
with  his  entrance,  during  Lincoln's  first  candidacy,  into  the 
field  of  politics,  his  literary  activities  were  made  largely  sub 
servient  to  his  civic  endeavours  and  aspirations.  First  one  of 
the  pillars  of  the  Republican  party,  and  later  chairman  of  the 
Independent  Republicans  who  rebelled  against  the  nomination 
of  Elaine ;  the  chief  exponent  and  the  most  influential  advocate 
of  Civil  Service  reform;  the  kindly  but  firm  leader  in  every 
forward  moving  social  cause,  Curtis,  during  the  latter  half  of 
his  life,  gave  up  the  chance  that  was  his  to  achieve  prepon 
derant  literary  fame,  winning,  instead,  his  high  title  in  the 
citizenship  of  his  country.  What  he  said  of  Lowell  may 
even  more  cordially  be  said  of  him — that  he  had  the  "  grace, 
charm,  and  courtesy  of  established  social  order,  blending  with 
the  masculine  force  and  the  creative  energy  of  the  Puritan 
spirit."  The  intimacy  between  Curtis,  Lowell,  and  Norton, 
so  fully  revealed  in  the  letters  of  the  three,  embodies  one  of 
the  rarest  and  most  fragrant  episodes  of  friendship  among 
American  men  of  letters.  Each  influenced  the  others,  strength 
ening  that  faith  in  one's  self  which,  among  civilized  men,  is  the 
elementary  religion.  Each  of  these  three  was  true  to  the  con 
viction  that  acts  which  primarily  serve  ambition  are  seldom  in 
accordance  with  the  ambition  to  serve.  Yet  Curtis,  for  all  his 
unf earing  rectitude,  felt  most  keenly  that  only  those  who  are 
virtuous  have  the  right  to  judge  severely;  but  a  part  of  their 
virtue  consists  in  the  frequent  kindly  abnegation  of  this  right. 
In  his  essays  and  addresses  on  Burns,  on  Bryant,  on  Sum- 
ner,  on  Wendell  Phillips,  Curtis  combines  the  qualities  of  the 
scholar,  the  lover  of  romance,  and  the  radical  reformer;  while 
in  his  attitude  towards  nature,  as  apart  from  his  interpretation 
and  exposition  of  the  deeds  of  individuals,  he  shows  a  kinship 
with  Thoreau  in  his  rarest  moods.  Lowell  would  have  spurned 
the  thought  that  Thoreau  was  our  most  nobly  imaginative 
nature  writer  (to  whom  Emerson  owed  a  debt  that  has  not  yet 


n6  Later  Essayists 

been  fully  appreciated) ;  and  indeed,  one  recalls  how  Lowell,  as 
editor  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  objected  to  a  paragraph  of 
Thoreau's  wherein  the  pines  were  made  to  tower  into  a  higher 
heaven  than  might  be  reached  by  the  souls  of  lesser  men. 
Curtis  we  cannot  imagine  thus  adopting  the  theologian's  views. 

What  man  of  you  all  [writes  Curtis  in  his  paper  on  A  utumn  Days] 
what  man  of  you  all  is  as  true  and  noble  for  a  man  as  the  oak  upon 
yon  hill-top  for  an  oak?  The  oak  obeys  every  law,  regularly 
increases  and  develops,  stretches  its  shady  arms  of  blessing,  proudly 
wears  its  leafy  coronel,  and  drops  abundant  acorns  for  future  oaks 
as  faithful ;  but  who  of  you  all  does  not  violate  the  law  of  your  life  ? 

And  a  little  further  on:  "A  stately  elm  is  the  archbishop  of  my 
green  diocese.  In  full  canonicals  he  stands  sublime.  His 
flowing  robes  fill  the  blithe  air  with  sacred  grace."  It  is  in 
sentences  like  these  that  Curtis  takes  firm  place  beside  Thoreau, 
both  of  them  ambassadors  bringing  messages  from  the  world  of 
nature  to  the  world  of  men — and  beside  John  Muir  (1838- 
1914),  who,  though  born  in  Scotland,  was  thoroughly  natural 
ized  in  America,  as  inventive  as  any  Yankee,  and  a  passionate 
foster -son  of  the  western  mountains. 

To  sit  in  judgment  on  the  authors  whose  lives  outran  that 
of  Curtis — men  whose  hospitality  was  extended  to  so  many 
younger  writers,  and  whose  personal  inspiration  has  quickened 
unforgettable  hours — is  no  easy  task;  and  far  more  grateful  it 
would  be  to  saunter  in  informal  essay  fashion  along  the  paths  of 
past  days,  placing  wreaths  of  affectionate  reverence  in  homes 
where  Norton,  Higginson,  Stedman  dwell  no  more.  But  we 
are  here  concerned  less  with  the  charm  of  men  in  their  social 
intercourse  than  with  the  printed  pages  which  are  to  suc 
ceeding  generations  their  sole  direct  heritage — direct  heritage 
because  who  shall  gauge  those  influences  which,  emanating 
from  personalities  like  Norton's  and  Stedman 's,  come  to  flower 
long  after  the  hand  that  cast  the  initial  seed  has  withered  in 
the  grave?  The  bibliographer  of  Charles  Eliot  Norton  (1827- 
1908)  finds  comparatively  little  to  record  that  is  of  importance 
to  the  American  essay.  A  study  of  Dante ;  notes  of  travel  and 
study  in  Italy;  some  papers  published  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly; 
and,  later  in  life,  historical  studies  concerning  church  building  in 
the  Middle  Ages, — these  indicate  to  some  extent  the  trend  of 


Charles  Eliot  Norton 


Norton's  interests,  and  form  a  distinguished  contribution  in 
those  particular  fields  of  literature  and  art.  I  It  is,  however,  to 
his  letters,  published  after  his  death,  that  we  must  have  recourse 
for  fuller  appreciation  of  his  place  in  the  annals  of  our  literary 
culture.  The  revelation  is  a  fine  one.  We  behold  a  being 
of  simple  and  unswerving  rectitude,  with  a  capacity  for  noble 
friendships,  and  with  a  rare  power  for  instilling  enthusiasm. 
Not  only  to  the  large  group  of  students  who  came,  at  an  im 
pressionable  age,  under  the  influence  of  the  Professor  of  the 
Fine  Arts  at  Harvard  University,  but  also  to  men  like  Ruskin, 
Lowell,  Ho  wells,  and  other  intellectual  leaders  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  the  clear-  visioned  Norton  spoke  heartening  words. 
In  a  letter,  in  1874,  to  Carlyle,  Norton  wrote  of  his  aim 

to  give  the  students  some  definite  notions  of  the  Fine  Arts  as  a  mode 
in  which  men  in  past  times  have  expressed  their  thoughts,  faiths, 
sentiments,  and  desires;  to  show  the  political,  moral,  and  social 
conditions  which  have  determined  the  forms  of  the  Arts,  and  to 
quicken  so  far  as  may  be,  in  the  youth  of  a  land  barren  of  visible 
memorials  of  former  times,  the  sense  of  connection  with  the  past 
and  gratitude  for  the  effort  and  labours  of  other  nations  and  former 
generations. 

This  was  Norton's  gift  to  America:  an  accentuation  of  the  con 
tinuity  and  permanence  of  the  ideal  aspects  of  the  race  life. 
Culture,  with  both  its  aesthetic  and  moral  implications,  was  the 
inheritance  of  this  New  Englander,  in  whose  idealism  was 
inwoven  that  Brahminical  strain  which,  while  it  strengthens,  at 
times  compresses;  and  so  we  find  him,  in  his  letters  as  in  his 
life,  a  standard-bearer  of  cultivation  who  yet  lacked  the  buoy 
ant  enthusiasm  of  American  democracy.  His  early  letters 
never  overflow  with  the  spirits  of  youth  ;  the  missives  of  middle 
life  contain  frequent  sentences  reflecting  upon  the  unsatis- 
factoriness  of  American  society;  and  this  morally  Hebraic 
descendant  of  ultra-religious  Puritan  forbears,  sounds,  in  his 
later  letters,  a  note  of  impatient  agnosticism.  But  withal, 
how  fine  a  quality  flavours  his  correspondence,  his  comments 
on  Whitman,  Sumner,  Lincoln,  Wendell  Phillips,  and  other 
subjects  of  his  pen  !  Norton  stands  among  American  essayists 
and  lecturers  as  the  most  unyielding  critic  of  vulgarity  in  the 
'See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xxv. 


n8  Later  Essayists 

social  life  of  his  day  and  of  futile  sentimentalizing  in  the 
political  life.  We  miss  in  his  letters  that  sense  of  humour  which 
is  the  touchstone  of  the  philosopher,  and  which  Norton's 
friend  Curtis  used  as  a  literary  force  in  his  public  career. 
We  miss  also  the  light  touch  of  fancy  and  the  quick  thrust 
of  wit ;  while,  at  times,  fastidiousness  of  language  and  thought 
accentuates  Norton's  aloofness  from  the  ways  of  other 
men.  When  George  E.  Woodberry  sent  Norton,  in  1881,  his 
verses  on  America,  Norton  commented  on  their  surplusage  of 
patriotism  in  this  manner:  "We  love  our  country,  but  with 
keen-eyed  and  disciplined  passion,  not  blindly  exalting  her. 
.  .  .  To  do  justice  to  the  America  that  may  be,  we  must  not 
exalt  the  America  that  is,  beyond  her  worth."  This  kind  of 
integrity  of  judgment,  this  almost  bleak  disregard  of  the 
popular  aspect  of  things,  this  stoical  insistence  on  the  discipline 
of  passion,  made  Norton  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with,  even 
when,  almost  alone  among  our  American  men  of  letters,  he  took 
fearless  issue  with  the  national  administration  at  the  time  of 
the  war  with  Spain.  Yet  his  power  with  the  written  word  was 
not  sufficiently  forceful  to  assure  any  very  vital  hold  on  men  of 
a  later  day.  He  was  a  phenomenon  of  aesthetic  intuition  and  of 
intellectual  purity  to  whom  we  willingly  offer  tribute  of  admir 
ation  ;  yet  we  are  aware  of  that  pessimistic  drop  of  acid  which 
made  his  blood  run  a  little  more  coldly  than  that  of  his  fellow 
authors,  precipitating  the  residue  of  an  ultimately  weary  ex 
pression  of  New  England  culture. 

One  of  our  earlier  essayists,  Henry  T.  Tuckerman, J  in  his 
Defense  of  Enthusiasm  attacked  the  New  England  philosophy 
of  life  because  of  its  too  preponderant  insistence  on  mental 
capacity  and  moral  tendencies,  and  wrote :  ' '  It  seems  as  if  the 
great  art  of  human  culture  consists  chiefly  in  preserving  the 
glow  and  freshness  of  the  heart."  Had  Tuckerman  lived  in 
the  later  decades  of  the  last  century,  he  might,  indeed,  have 
felt  out  of  sympathy  with  Norton,  but  not  with  many  of  our 
other  essayists.  The  Civil  War  brought  New  England  emotion 
ally  into  the  full  flow  of  that  larger  national  life  for  which 
Emerson  and  his  school  had  prepared  it,  and  while  the  later 
American  essayists  have  abstained  from  chauvinism,  and  have 
written  with  the  scholar's  appreciation  of  what  foreign  culture 
'  See  Book  II,  Chap.  in. 


Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson 

has  to  offer,  theirs  is  a  consistent  and  hopeful  interpretation  of 
American  ideals.  Consider,  for  instance,  Thomas  Wentworth 
Higginson  (1823-1911).  At  the  age  of  twenty-seven  he  gave 
up  his  pastorate  at  Newburyport  because  he  ran  counter  to  the 
sentiments  of  his  congregation,  believing  that  his  foremost 
duty  was  to  preach  a  word  for  mankind  in  attacking  the 
institution  of  slavery.  With  Theodore  Parker  and  Wendell 
Phillips  he  became  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Abolition  move 
ment,  daring,  in  aiding  the  fugitive  slaves,  to  obey  a  law  higher 
for  him  than  that  of  Congress.  In  the  dangers  of  the  battle 
field  he  shared,  when,  as  colonel  of  the  first  regiment  of  free 
coloured  soldiers,  he  served  in  the  inevitable  conflict.  His 
writings,  beginning  in  1853  and  continuing  almost  incessantly 
for  well  over  threescore  years,  carried  him  into  fields  of  history, 
literature,  education,  and  politics,  and  reveal  him  as  sym 
pathetically  familiar  with  the  culture  of  the  ancients  as  with 
the  creative  thought  of  modern  democracy.  In  his  translation 
of  Epictetus,  in  his  delightful  essay  on  Sappho,  he  was  the 
scholar  of  catholic  tastes,  whose  shelves  in  his  simple  Cambridge 
home  gave  equally  gracious  welcome  to  the  message  of  the 
Stoics  and  the  appealing  human  lyricism  of  Heine;  yet  who 
wrote  in  the  fly-leaf  of  a  copy  of  his  own  volume  of  essays 
entitled  Old  Cambridge,  wherein  he  discusses  the  literary  epochs 
of  his  native  town  and  writes  at  length  on  Holmes,  Longfellow, 
and  Lowell :  ' '  This  book  is  one  of  my  favourites  among  my  too 
numerous  productions  because  it  reproduces  so  fully  the  men 
and  traditions  which  surrounded  my  early  youth."  These 
traditions,  whose  finest  essence  his  own  life  emphasizes,  con 
noted  for  him  those  duties  of  citizenship  that  made  him  a  mili 
tant  intellectual  leader  to  the  end  of  his  long  life ;  perhaps  not 
the  least  of  his  services  being  his  espousal  of  the  cause  of  woman 
suffrage,  whereto  his  admiration  for  Margaret  Fuller,  whose 
life  he  wrote,  contributed  a  quota  of  immediately  personal 
enthusiasm.  Yet  so  varied  was  Higginson 's  culture,  so  easy 
flowing  his  style,  so  wide  the  fund  of  quotations  on  which  he 
loved  to  draw,  and  so  pleasant  his  wit,  that  his  essays,  even 
when  propagandist,  are  literature.  And  through  them  all 
runs  a  stream  of  optimism  which,  let  it  be  admitted,  is  to  a 
great  degree  a  matter  of  temperament  yet  no  less  constructive 
an  element  on  that  account.  But  for  this  optimism,  this 


120  Later  Essayists 

American  faith  in  moulding  the  living  material  of  his  own  day 
into  the  finer  forms  inherent  in  his  country's  institutions, 
Emerson,  the  most  influential  of  our  essayists,  would  have  had 
a  lesser  hold  on  the  minds  of  his  fellow  citizens ;  and  the  value 
of  Higginson  comes  largely  from  a  similar  happy  endowment. 

The  ministry,  whose  record  in  our  annals  is  so  frequently 
interwoven  with  that  of  American  literature,  had  its  greatest 
literary  figures  in  New  England.  A  distinguished  exception 
was  Moncure  D.  Con  way  (1832-1907),  who,  like  Higginson, 
gave  up  his  pulpit  because  of  his  anti-slavery  pronouncements. 
A  Virginian  by  birth,  he  did  his  most  important  work  as  an 
editor  in  Boston,  where  he  conducted  The  Dial  and  The  Com 
monwealth;  and  as  a  lecturer  in  England,  especially  in  his 
illuminating  discourses  during  the  Civil  War.  In  later  life, 
again  in  America,  he  wrote  many  papers  of  sterling  worth, 
essays  notable  because  of  their  high  ethical  plane;  yet,  lacking 
the  authentic  fire  of  genius,  the  light  of  his  writings  has  now 
merely  become  mingled  in  the  wide  effulgence  emanating  from 
that  group  of  great  citizen -writers  in  whose  ranks  he  marched 
with  so  firm  a  tread. 

Probably  the  most  immediately  successful  exponent  of 
practical  optimism  in  the  Cambridge  group  was  Edward 
Everett  Hale  (1822-1909),  Higginson's  senior  by  but  a  year, 
and  like  Higginson  a  clergyman  and  one  of  the  Overseers  of 
Harvard  University.  There  is  a  pleasant  logic  in  the  fact  that 
this  grand-nephew  of  the  Revolutionary  patriot  whose  only 
regret,  as  he  mounted  the  scaffold,  was  that  he  had  but  one 
life  to  lose  for  his  country,  should  have  written  a  tale  that, 
despite  the  startling  improbability  of  its  plot,  is,  in  its  stir 
ring  presentation  of  the  value  of  patriotism,  a  masterpiece  of 
our  literature.  But  while  the  fame  of  Edward  Everett  Hale 
would  be  assured  if  he  had  done  nothing  further  than  to  write, 
during  the  Civil  War  times,  The  Man  Without  a  Country,  *  let  it 
not  be  forgotten  that  his  volume  published  in  1870,  entitled  Ten 
Times  One  is  Ten,  led  to  the  establishment  of  philanthropic 
societies  the  world  over,  the  nature  of  whose  charitable  activi 
ties  is  suggested  in  their  motto :  ' '  Look  up  and  not  down ;  look 
forward  and  not  back;  look  out  and  not  in;  lend  a  hand." 
Hale's  magazine  with  the  final  phrase  of  the  preceding  motto 
1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 


Julia  Ward  Howe;  Emma  Lazarus       I21 

as  its  title  was  a  journal  of  progress  and  a  record  of  charity, 
wherein  were  continued  those  ideas  of  liberal  Christianity  that 
underlie  an  earlier  publication,  Old  and  New,  which  he  had 
founded  in  1869.  To  both  he  contributed  many  papers,  while 
articles  on  historical  and  literary  themes  came  frequently 
from  his  pen,  in  addition  to  many  stories  of  discovery  and 
adventure,  of  invention,  of  war,  and  of  the  sea.  In  his  recently 
published  letters  there  is  further  disclosure  of  his  mental 
fertility  and  of  his  kind  and  practical  Christianity;  although 
his  style  is  simple  to  the  point  of  bareness,  and  the  ordinary 
literary  graces  are  absent. 

Hale  is  not  the  only  American  author  whose  fame  is  inti 
mately  inwoven  with  a  single  piece  of  work.  The  same  period 
in  our  history  that  brought  forth  his  masterpiece  is  responsible 
for  the  immortal  poem  to  which  the  marching  feet  and  the  ded 
icated  hearts  of  myriad  soldiers  kept  time  as  they  swept  on 
to  bloody  struggles  with  The  Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic  on 
their  lips.  But  Julia  Ward  Howe  (1819-1910)  was  not  alone 
the  creator  of  the  most  potent  of  our  battle  poems. *  Her  place 
is  secure  in  the  record  of  many  liberalizing  movements,  espe 
cially  those  which  had  to  do  with  the  social  and  political  eleva 
tion  of  her  own  sex;  and,  beyond  this,  she  was  the  author  of  de 
lightful  papers  ranging  in  subject  matter  from  a  paper  on 
Aristophanes,  prepared  as  a  lecture  at  the  Concord  School 
of  Philosophy,  to  illuminating  studies  of  social  manners — such 
as  The  Salon  in  America  and  Is  Polite  Society  Polite? — full  of 
intelligent  criticism  and  that  discriminating  humour  which  is 
yet  too  serious  to  indulge  in  any  easy  satire.  Her  achieve 
ment,  as  a  whole,  entitles  her  to  rank  as  the  most  notable  woman 
of  letters  born  and  bred  in  the  metropolis  of  America;  although 
another  woman  belonging,  like  Julia  Ward  Howe,  to  an  old 
New  York  family  displayed  at  least  equal  intellectual  rarity. 
Nor  was  the  regard  wherein  Emma  Lazarus  (1849-87)  was 
held  by  such  men  as  Emerson,  Gilder,  Stedman,  Channing, 
Eggleston,  Dana,  and  Godkin  due  alone  to  those  poems  and 
essays  which  did  more  than  the  writings  of  any  other  American 
author  to  instil  among  Christians  a  sympathy  for  that  people  of 
whom  Emma  Lazarus  was  so  brave  an  exponent.  Quite  apart 
from  her  poems  and  articles  on  Jewish  themes,  there  can  be  no 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  11. 


122  Later  Essayists 

question  that,  if  one  except s  Margaret  Fuller,  there  was  no 
woman  among  our  authors  more  ardent  than  Emma  Lazarus 
in  her  interminable  search  for  aesthetic  culture,  no  woman 
whose  conversation,  to  quote  the  words  of  the  great  editor 
Charles  A.  Dana,  was  more  "deeply  interesting  and  intensely 
instructive."  Stedman  once  said  that  she  was  the  "natural 
companion  of  scholars  and  thinkers,"  a  comment  borne  out  by 
Emerson's  abiding  affection  and  admiration  for  her.  In  the 
field  of  prose,  some  of  her  most  memorable  achievements  were 
her  essays  on  Russian  Christianity  versus  American  Judaism, 
and  her  paper  on  Disraeli.  The  first  of  these,  written  some 
twoscore  years  ago  at  the  time  of  Russian  massacres,  presents, 
without  undue  apology,  or  undue  praise  of  her  race,  the  basic 
attitude  that  should  be  taken  in  regard  to  the  persecution  of 
the  Jews,  and  as  the  problem  is  still  one  that  civilization  has 
not  solved  with  fearless  honour,  let  us  listen  again  to  Emma 
Lazarus,  as,  reverting  to  the  thought  expressed  by  one  of  our 
most  high-minded  statesmen,  she  concludes  that  essay: 

Mr.  Evarts  has  put  the  question  upon  the  only  ground  which 
Americans  need  consider  or  act  upon.  It  is  not  that  it  is  the 
oppression  of  Jews  by  Russians — it  is  the  oppression  of  men  and 
women  by  men  and  women ;  and  we  are  men  and  women ! 

To  this  trio  of  noble  women — Margaret  Fuller,  Julia  Ward 
Howe,  Emma  Lazarus — there  should  be  added  the  name  of 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  (i  812-96),  *  who,  like  Hale  with  his  one 
great  story,  and  Julia  Ward  Howe  with  her  one  great  poem,  is 
remembered  on  account  of  her  one  great  novel.  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  has  thrown  her  essays  into  the  shade,  where  their 
existence  remains  unknown  to  the  large  majority  of  present- 
day  readers.  Yet  those  who  love  to  have  recourse  to  old 
pages  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly  find  her  an  essayist  of  charm 
and  range.  Her  House  and  Home  Papers,  published  under  the 
pseudonym  of  Christopher  Crowfield,  wherein  the  father  of  the 
family  discusses  all  manner  of  domestic  topics,  have  their  key 
note  in  the  thought  that  whereas  to  keep  a  house  is  a  practical 
affair  "in  the  region  of  weights,  measure,  colour  ...  to  keep 
a  home  lies  not  merely  in  the  sphere  of  all  these,  but  it  takes  in 
1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xi. 


Charles  Dudley  Warner  123 

the  intellectual,  the  social,  the  spiritual,  the  immortal."  The 
relationship  of  parents  to  children,  and  the  nature  of  child 
hood  itself;  the  servant  question;  matters  of  house  decoration; 
the  inherited  predilections  of  Aunt  Mehitable,  with  her  "scru 
pulous  lustrations  of  every  pane  of  glass";  discussions  con 
cerning  education,  hospitality,  pastimes;  helpful  considerations 
regarding  the  temptations  that  assail  human  nature,  are  all 
mingled  in  a  sane  atmosphere  of  simplicity  and  true  worth 
which  embraces,  but  in  no  Puritan  spirit,  the  quietly  heroical 
approach  to  life,  the  desire  not  only  to  enjoy  but  the  willing 
ness  also  "to  encounter  labour  and  sacrifice." 

It  was  Mrs.  Stowe's  famous  brother,  Henry  Ward  Beecher,1 
who  introduced  to  the  world  of  letters  the  most  likable  of  all 
the  later  American  essayists,  Charles  Dudley  Warner  (1829- 
1900),  when,  in  1870,  Beecher  wrote  the  preface  to  Warner's 
first  book,  My  Summer  in  a  Garden.  In  these  papers,  as  in  his 
Saunterings  (1872),  based  on  European  travels,  and  his  Back 
log  Studies  (1873),  there  are  a  genial  humour  and  a  grace  of 
style  decidedly  reminiscent  of  Washington  Irving,  whose  life 
Warner  was  later  to  write  in  a  most  sympathetic  way.  In  the 
long  course  of  his  lectures  and  essays  we  find  many  stimulating 
appeals  for  greater  personal  and  national  culture,  and  helpful 
discussions  in  the  field  of  social  topics,  especially  in  connection 
with  prison  reform.  His  travel  essays,  recording  adventures 
and  observations  in  Europe  and  America,  Africa  and  Asia,  are 
enjoyable  additions  to  this  branch  of  our  literature;  while 
Warner's  activities  as  an  abolitionist  bring  him  further  into 
touch  with  his  fellow  writers  of  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  He,  more  than  any  other  of  the  later  essayists, 
affected  his  lesser  contemporaries  of  the  pen.  His  papers, 
with  their  fireside  warmth,  their  sketchy  touch,  their  humorous 
and  intimate  personal  note,  were  studied  by  many  writers  for 
magazines  and  newspapers,  a  host  of  commonplace  scribes  who 
found  it  easier  to  imitate  the  Warner  flavour  than  to  create  any 
original  atmosphere  in  their  own  writings. 

For  a  delicious  example  of  Warner's  style  one  might  turn 
to  that  part  of  My  Summer  in  a  Garden  where  the  adult  agri 
culturist  has  an  entirely  ordinary  experience  in  which  his 
labours  are  set  at  naught  by  the  universal  characteristics  of 
1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xxn. 


124  Later  Essayists 

boyhood.  Here  Warner  rounds  out  a  paragraph  which  begins 
with  an  expression  of  semi-comic  awe,  with  a  reference  to  the 
Greek  conception  of  fate  as  that  element  in  human  affairs 
against  which  are  hopeless  the  prescience  of  the  wisest  minds, 
the  provisions  of  the  most  arduous  hands.  The  most  baffling 
and  sombre  of  themes  is  lightly  and  delightfully  touched, 
while  the  author  instils  in  our  attitude  towards  a  pear  tree  that 
sense  of  human  companionship  which,  elsewhere  in  his  pages, 
makes  peas  and  beans  and  the  upspringing  asparagus  warm 
and  living  things. 

There  are  two  other  papers  of  Warner's  from  which  a  few 
lines  may  indicate  how  he  influenced  the  thought  of  his  times, 
and  how  he  is  directly  related  to  other  American  essayists. 
One  is  The  Relation  of  Literature  to  Life,  an  address  introductory 
to  a  course  of  five  lectures  delivered  at  various  universities. 
Warner  differed  from  others  of  our  critics  in  his  belief  that 
the  development  of  American  letters  would  be  along  lines 
diverging  from,  rather  than  continuing  in,  the  channels  of 
English  literature,  and  his  first  precept,  as  a  student  and 
expositor  of  American  literature,  was  "to  study  the  people  for 
whom  it  was  produced."  In  the  light  of  our  national  char 
acter  would  thus  be  revealed  the  light  of  our  works  of  author 
ship  ;  and  Warner  clearly  understood  that  in  the  first  century  of 
the  United  States  the  national  character  expressed  itself  most 
widely  in  those  activities  of  invention,  material  production 
and  construction,  path-finding,  and  path-clearing,  which  have 
led  to  concrete  prosperity — all  of  which  Warner  summarizes  in 
the  phrase  "the  ideal  of  Croesus.  "  But  side  by  side  with  the 
more  material  tendencies,  he  perceived  those  finer  currents 
which  bear  the  rarer  cargo  of  American  idealism.  Thus  while 
Warner  with  frankness  pointed  out  that  the  majority  of  people 
look  upon  literature  as  a  decoration  rather  than  as  an  essential 
element  in  their  lives,  and  while  he  saw  that  culture  had  its 
own  unfortunate  arrogances,  yet  he  showed  how  poetry  (and 
all  that  poetry  connotes)  supplies  the  highest  wants  of  a  people : 
that  literature  is  power  as  well  as  pleasure.  In  his  Thoughts 
Suggested  by  Mr.  Fronde's  Progress,  Warner  wrote : 

When  we  speak  of  progress  we  may  mean  men  or  things.  We 
may  mean  the  lifting  of  the  race  as  a  whole  by  reason  of  more 


Hamilton  Wright  Mabie  125 

power  over  the  material  world,  by  reason  of  what  we  call  the 
conquest  of  nature;  or  we  may  mean  a  higher  development  of  the 
individual  man,  so  that  he  shall  he  better  and  happier. 

In  progress  of  both  these  kinds  Warner  had  faith.  He  never 
forsook  the  American  birthright  of  optimism,  while  the  ethical 
note  in  his  writings,  continuing  the  New  England  tradition,  was 
uttered  with  so  much  grace  and  fine  whimsicality  of  style  that 
it  lost  didactic  harshness. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  American  literature  has  con 
siderably  suffered  from  the  platitudinous  didactic  note.  It  is 
for  this  reason  that,  with  sentiments  of  utmost  civic  respect, 
with  full  appreciation  for  the  fluent  diction  of  the  most  prolific 
of  our  later  essay  writers,  we  must  regard  Hamilton  Wright 
Mabie  (1845-1916)  as  a  teacher  of  sweetness  and  sanity,  as 
a  fair-minded  expositor  of  literature,  as  a  friendly  observer 
of  nature,  but  not  as  an  important  man  of  letters.  Lacking 
colour,  sharpness  of  outline,  light  and  shade, — all  those  quali 
ties  which  the  great  stylists  have  as  effectually  at  their  com 
mand  as  have  the  greatest  painters, — he  represents  perhaps 
more  convincingly  than  any  other  of  our  essayists  both  the 
possibilities  and  limitations  inherent  in  writers  seeking  to 
bring  "sweetness  and  light"  to  a  generation  of  readers  whose 
early  education  comes  from  the  public  schools,  and  who,  for 
later  enlightenment,  turn  to  innumerable  magazines.  As  the 
editor  of  The  Independent,  as  a  lecturer,  as  an  indefatigable 
author  of  volumes  of  essays,  Mabie  was  a  useful  teacher  in  his 
own  day,  but  there  is  little  in  his  writings  that  those  who  are 
conversant  with  his  European  and  American  contemporaries 
cannot  find  expressed  elsewhere  with  more  force  and  originality. 

Mabie  was  a  voluminous  writer  on  literary  topics,  but 
two  keener  students  of  literature,  among  the  American  writ 
ers  in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  were  Edwin 
Percy  Whipple  (1819-86)  and  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman 
(1833-1908).  Whipple  is  a  critic  whose  attainments  have 
been  neglected  by  later  readers,  yet  whose  works  have  force  and 
clarity  of  expression,  sharp  insight,  frequent  wit.  He  was 
born  in  Gloucester,  Massachusetts,  the  very  year  that  Wash 
ington  Irving's  Sketch  Book  marked  the  commencement  of 
American  belles-lettres;  but  his  first  book,  Essays  and  Reviews 


i26  Later  Essayists 

(1848),  allies  him  rather  with  the  Macaulay  school  of  essayists 
than  with  the  more  personal  and  leisurely  Irving  tradition. 
Indeed,  it  was  Whipple's  brilliant  article  on  Macaulay,  written 
in  1843,  that  made  its  author  known  to  the  literary  world  of 
Boston,  where  Whipple,  a  young  man  of  twenty-four,  was  then 
employed  in  the  brokerage  business;  and  Macaulay's  style  is 
reflected  in  much  of  the  earlier  work  of  his  American  admirer. 
In  the  lectures  and  essays  contained  in  the  volumes  entitled 
Literature  and  Life  (1871)  and  Character  and  Characteristic  Men 
(1877)  Whipple  continued  to  reveal  that  really  keen  pene 
tration  into  the  strata  of  values  and  that  ready  entrance  into 
the  temperament  of  his  subject  which  had  been  shown  in 
his  earlier  appraisals  of  men  and  books.  There  are  few  better 
essays  on  British  critics  than  Whipple's  paper  wherein,  in 
discussing  Jeffrey,  to  whose  charm  of  wit  he  is  "by  no  means 
insensible,"  Whipple  not  only  refers  with  succinct  phraseology 
to  the  "cool  and  provoking  dogmatism"  and  "the  insulting 
tone  of  fairness"  of  the  British  critic;  but  goes  deeper  into  the 
nature  of  aesthetics,  as  where  he  writes :  "  By  making  beauty 
dependent  on  the  association  of  external  things  with  the  ordin 
ary  emotions  and  affections  of  our  nature,  by  denying  its 
existence  both  as  an  inward  sense  and  as  outward  reality,  he 
substantially  annihilates  it."  Then  again,  of  Hazlitt:  "He 
was  naturally  shy  and  despairing  of  his  own  powers,  but  his 
dogmatism  was  of  that  turbulent  kind  which  comes  from  passion 
and  self -distrust."  Sheridan,  Fielding,  Carlyle,  and  the  earlier 
English  dramatists,  beginning  with  Marlowe  and  Ben  Jonson, 
are  all  treated  with  the  sympathy  of  the  man  of  letters  who  is,  at 
the  same  time,  the  student  of  national  and  epochal  tendencies; 
and  so,  too,  in  his  estimates  of  Rufus  Choate,  Emerson,  Motley, 
Sumner,  and  others  of  our  own  writers. 

In  the  centennial  year  of  American  independence,  Whipple 
contributed  to  Harper's  Magazine  a  paper  entitled  The  First 
Century  of  the  Republic,  in  which  he  reviewed  the  development 
of  'American  literature  and  showed  how  its  course  had  been 
"subsidiary  to  the  general  movement  of  the  American  mind." 
In  agreeing  with  this  point  of  view,  Stedman,  in  his  Poets  of 
America  (1885),  expands  the  thesis:  "Our  imagination  has 
found  exercise  in  the  subjugation  of  a  continent,  in  war,  politics, 
and  government,  in  inventive  and  constructive  energy,  in 


Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  127 

developing  and  controlling  our  material  heritage."  It  was 
because  Stedman  was  so  enthusiastic  a  follower  of  all  the 
efforts  and  advances  of  the  human  mind,  an  alert  man  of 
affairs,  experienced  in  business  and  finance,  as  well  as  a  poet, x 
that  he  possessed  in  such  generous  measure  the  ability  to  judge 
both  scientifically  and  poetically.  His  volumes  Victorian  Poets 
(1876)  and  Poets  of  America — those  standard  works  of  fine 
sanity  and  even  finer  vision — reveal  the  great  eclectic  who 
with  warm  heart  and  open  mind  had  a  thousand  approaches 
to  life.  His  understanding  of  philosophy  and  his  vibrating 
sense  of  melody  are  evident,  but  perhaps  nowhere  more  signi 
ficantly  than  in  his  appraisal  of  the  poetry  of  Emerson,  where 
he  uses  a  metaphor  suggested  by  science  and  the  practical 
affairs  of  everyday  life.  Emerson,  writes  Stedman,  "had 
seasons  when  feeling  and  expression  were  in  circuit,  and  others 
when  the  wires  were  down."  Only  Stedman  could  thus  have 
evalued  the  electric  spark,  the  brilliant  mysterious  vitality 
of  Emerson's  poetry,  negated  at  times  by  the  insufficiency  of 
his  art. 

Stedman's  essays  were  almost  exclusively  in  the  field 
of  literary  criticism,  but  there  have  been  published  since  his 
death  two  copious  volumes  of  letters  revealing  in  delightful 
fashion  the  range  of  his  interest  and  the  charm  of  his  tempera 
ment.  Beauty  was  his  guide,  and  friendship  was  his  passion. 
He  had  that  spirituality  which  led  him  to  write  to  John  Hay 
—the  most  enjoyable  of  letter  writers  among  our  literary 
statesmen — that  the  earth  "is  smaller  than  either  your  soul  or 
mine";  and  though  Stedman's  manliness  remained  undaunted 
before  cruel  onsets  of  fate — frequent  illness,  the  loss  of  fortune, 
the  death  of  near  and  dear — he  could  be  moved  almost  to 
woman's  tears  when  the  love  of  friends  brought  to  him  un 
expected  tribute.  "For  of  Heavenly  Love  we  may  dream,  but 
know  nothing,  while  from  the  currents  that  flow  between 
earthly  hearts — young  and  old — we  do  gain  our  most  real  and 
exquisite  compensation."  In  the  hurried  life  of  New  York 
this  poet  who  was  a  broker  on  the  Stock  Exchange  made  time 
to  correspond  not  alone  with  his  many  confreres  in  fame  but 
with  a  host  of  younger  writers;  and  it  was  his  chivalric  boast 
that  no  letter  from  a  woman  ever  remained  unanswered.  The 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  x. 


128  Later  Essayists 

broadness  of  his  sympathies  in  art,  in  drama,  in  music,  as  well 
as  in  letters,  coupled  with  his  generous  interest  in  the  effort  of 
all  those  who  even  at  the  furthest  radius  came  within  his  circle, 
made  of  Stedman  one  of  the  finest  influences  in  the  develop 
ment  of  New  York's  cultural  life.  "New  York,"  Stedman 
wrote  in  his  essay  on  Bayard  Taylor,  "is  still  too  practical 
to  do  much  more  than  affect  an  aesthetic  sentiment."  This 
judgment  was  pronounced  more  than  a  score  of  years  ago, 
and  if  it  is  now  increasingly  open  to  qualification,  Stedman  is 
one  of  those  whom  we  have  therefor  most  to  thank. 

Another,  and  to  a  marked  degree,  is  William  Winter 
( 1 836- 1 9 1 7) .  x  For  many  years  the  dean  of  American  dramatic 
critics,  he  ever  rode  full  tilt  and  fearless  against  the  commer 
cialism  rampant  on  our  stage.  He  was  the  most  winning  of 
our  essayists  on  Shakespeare,  having  in  his  own  nature  more 
than  a  touch  of  Hamlet.  Erudite  in  the  technique  of  the  play 
wright,  Winter  was  still  more  versed  in  the  lyric  knowledge 
of  the  poet  and  in  that  high  wisdom  which  realizes  both  the 
potentialities  and  the  obligations  of  dramatic  art;  and  thus 
his  critiques  in  the  daily  press  were  concerned  with  the  eter 
nal,  as  opposed  to  the  diurnal,  aspect  of  things.  But  while 
his  standards  were  uncompromising,  his  style  was  gracious, 
courteous,  tender  even — as  we  should  expect  of  a  poet;  and 
in  such  a  series  of  papers  as  are  included  in  his  Gray  Days  and 
Gold  (1894)  we  see  now  great  a  part  sentiment  played  in  the 
life  and  writings  of  that  brave  antagonist  of  all  the  blatant 
and  all  the  insidious  influences  which  drag  down  the  art  of  a 
nation.  The  past  lured  him  with  every  manner  of  associations, 
and  his  writings  on  Shakespeare's  England  have  the  charm  of 
old  days — one  of  the  characteristics  most  appealing  in  the  work 
of  Washington  Irving.  Indeed,  with  a  greater  strain  of  mel 
ancholy,  and  a  lesser  strain  of  humour,  William  Winter  was, 
in  the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  last  and  most 
winsome  descendant  of  our  first  great  essayist ;  and  especially 
by  the  English  public  should  he  continue  to  be  read  as  one 
who  held  that  land  in  the  tenderest  regard. 

The  marked  enjoyment  in  things  of  old — old  books,  old 
places,  the  myriad  associations  binding  together  the  blossoms 
of  the   years — which  casts  glamour  on  many  of  the  pages 
1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xvm. 


Other  Essayists  129 

of  Winter,  underlies  the  literary  work  of  Laurence  Hutton 
(1843-1904), r  his  companion  in  the  field  of  dramatic  criticism 
and  along  the  byways  of  foreign  travel.  Among  collectors 
Hutton  is  remembered  for  the  treasures  he  amassed,  especially 
books  relating  to  the  theatre  and  play-bills.  The  corollary  of 
this  enthusiasm  is  found  in  his  papers  and  addresses  on  the 
drama,  wherefrom  arises  winningly  the  human  note.  He  wrote, 
also,  a  series  of  volumes  describing  literary  pilgrimages  in  Eng 
land,  Italy,  and  many  another  land, — volumes  that  place  him 
graciously  in  the  large  company  of  American  essayists  whose 
theme  has  been  that  of  travel ;  and  with  him  our  own  journey 
fittingly  ends. 

The  scope  of  present-day  essayists  is  far  wider  than  that  of 
the  men  of  the  preceding  century.  The  tendency  is  away 
from  the  traditionary  essay  of  morals  or  of  literary  culture, 
partially  because  the  classics  are  no  longer  part  and  parcel  of 
our  education,  and  largely  because  science  and  social  economics 
are  more  and  more  requisitioning  the  pens  of  many  of  our 
most  brilliant  contemporary  essayists.  We  have,  however, 
many  writers,  of  course,  whose  work  continues  the  literary 
tradition ;  and  to  name  Howells,  Woodberry,  Santayana,  Wood- 
row  Wilson,  Henry  Van  Dyke,  Brander  Matthews,  Paul  Elmer 
More,  Agnes  Repplier,  and  John  Burroughs — foremost  among 
nature  writers — were  yet  to  omit  others  well  deserving  of 
inclusion  lest  too  long  a  catalogue  of  ships  should  still  over 
look  some  bark  of  letters  already  worthily  launched.  Our 
grateful  task  has  been  to  write  of  the  men  who  have  gone  by, 
a  group  of  noble  gentlemen,  whose  attitude  towards  life  was 
that  of  the  idealist,  and  whose  courtesy  of  spirit  and  courtesy 
of  phrase  are  permeating  traits  of  their  work.  Not  even  in  the 
harshest  days  of  the  Civil  War  is  there  a  brow-beating  epithet 
or  sneering  causticity.  If  the  American  essayists  and  critics 
owe  a  debt  to  the  English  writers  of  the  eighteenth  and  nine 
teenth  centuries — as  indeed  they  do — they  have  removed  from 
their  inheritance  all  taint  of  bitterness  and  cruel  satire,  and  our 
critical  literature  has  (with  the  exception  of  Poe  in  his  unin 
spired  moments)  no  mean,  no  biassed,  no  tyrannical — and  no 
fulsome — appraiser  of  literary  values  or  of  the  motives  of  men's 
actions.  If,  however,  we  turn  to  our  group  of  later  essayists 
1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xvm. 
VOL.  in — 9 


130  Later  Essayists 

as  a  whole,  we  are  soon  aware  that  they  leave  something  to  be 
desired,  and  that  we  must  have  recourse  to  European  essays  for 
the  supplying  of  this  want.  As  our  fiction  has  refused  to 
portray  life  with  full  verity,  to  dissect  with  searching  candour 
the  hidden  motives  in  individual  life,  so,  too,  have  our  essay 
writers  abstained  from  the  subtle  workings  of  the  mind  in  the 
field  of  personal  emotions  and  desires.  There  is,  however,  a 
distinction  to  be  made  when  we  seek  to  explain  these  limitations 
in  American  fiction  and  American  essays.  In  the  first  case  is 
preponderantly  involved  the  purpose  of  popular  appeal  along 
the  lines  of  least  resistance,  with  financial  success  as  the  writ 
er's  reward.  In  the  second  case,  the  purpose  of  educating  the 
mind  of  a  nation  not  yet  ready  to  appreciate  art  in  ail  its 
ramifications,  has,  whether  directly  or  unconsciously,  led  our 
essayists  to  refrain  from  themes  which  Continental  writers  have 
made  luminous  to  peoples  inheriting  the  Renaissance  rather 
than  the  Puritan  traditions.  The  group  of  essayists  that  we 
are  leaving  may  indeed  have  theoretically  subscribed  to  the 
French  dictum  that  style  is  the  man,  yet  they  wrote,  rather, 
under  the  propulsion  of  the  idea  that  mankind  is  more  than 
style. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

Travellers  and   Explorers,  1846-1900 

THE  central  world-belt  of  human  progress  up  to  the 
present  era  lies  along  the  fortieth  parallel  of  north 
latitude  with  general  limits  ten  degrees  on  each  side. 
That  the  region  now  the  United  States  falls  almost  entirely 
within  this  belt  explains  the  instinctive  drift  of  Europeans 
westward  to,  and  across,  this  particular  untrodden  field. 
The  Anglo-Saxon  branch,  attaining  a  dominance  of  power 
therein,  halted  briefly  at  the  obstacle  of  the  Appalachian 
mountain  system,  passed  that  barrier,  and  marched  on  its 
predestined  course  to  the  western  ocean  with  a  development  of 
accompanying  literature  described  up  to  1846  in  a  former 
chapter1 — and  continued  in  this  to  the  year  1900,  with  a  slight 
extension  at  each  end. 

A  new  order  of  events  developed  speedily  with  the  triumph 
of  the  Texans  over  Santa  Anna  and  the  creation  of  the  Lone 
Star  Republic  in  1841  with  its  premeditated  intention  of 
annexation  to  the  United  States.  This  intention  the  Mexican 
Republic  declared  would  be,  if  consummated,  a  cause  of  war, 
but  the  movement  was  not  halted.  The  constant  influx  of 
pioneers  from  the  "States"  made  annexation  a  foregone  con 
clusion,  while  books  that  now  appeared  like  Colonel  Edward 
Stiff's  The  Texan  Emigrant  (1840)  aided  and  abetted  the 
prospective  addition  to  the  American  republic.  He  offers  for  a 
frontispiece  a  map  of  Texas  which  has  small  consideration  for 
the  expansive  Texan  idea  that  the  new  republic's  western 
limits  were  where  the  Texan  pleased  to  place  them,  quite 
regardless  of  Mexican  contention,  for  the  Colonel  draws  the 
1  Book  II,  Chap.  i. 

131 


132      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846  1900 

western  boundary  at  the  Nueces  River  exactly  where  the 
Mexicans  declared  it  must  be. 

The  ambitious  Texans,  however,  were  not  of  his  mind. 
They  wanted  territory  and  they  understood  that  far  beyond 
the  world  of  intervening  desert  unknown  to  them  flowed  the 
Rio  Grande  del  Norte,  whose  valley  was  productive  and  for 
some  two  centuries  had  been  cultivated  by  a  Spanish  popu 
lation  with  the  attractive  city  of  Santa  Fe  a  trade  centre  worth 
owning.  The  story  of  The  Spanish  Conquest  of  New  Mexico 
(1869)  by  W.  W.  H.  Davis  and  El  Gringo,  or  New  Mexico  and 
her  People  (1857)  by  the  same  author,  who  spent  some  years  in 
the  region,  show  that  the  Spaniards  in  entering  and  building 
up  New  Mexico  had  no  thought  of  the  Texans  that  were  to  be. 
Samuel  Cozzens  in  The  Marvellous  Country  or  Three  Years  in 
Arizona  and  New  Mexico  (1873)  gives  more  of  the  story,  with 
modern  additions,  and  Historical  Sketches  of  New  Mexico  (1883) 
by  ex-Governor  L.  Bradford  Prince,  who  still  lives  in  Santa  Fe, 
is  another  important  volume  on  this  subject. 

Although  the  Rio  Grande  settlements  and  the  capital  city 
of  Santa  Fe  were  so  far  from  the  outermost  fringe  of  Texan  life 
that  the  Texans  actually  knew  little  about  them,  these  had 
fixed  their  minds  on  extending  Texas  to  the  Rio  Grande,  and  to 
the  Rio  Grande  it  must  go.  Therefore  they  decided  to  march 
across  the  unknown  and  formally  annex  the  old-time  towns 
and  villages,  whose  inhabitants  were  supposed  to  be  eager  to 
become  Texans.  A  grand  caravan  accordingly  was  organized, 
partly  military,  partly  mercantile,  to  proceed  to  the  conquest. 
The  expedition  moved  off  into  the  wilderness  with  far  rosier 
expectations  than  facts  warranted.  Disaster  was  not  long  in 
falling  upon  the  party,  and  worse  disaster  awaited  their  strag 
gling  remnant  at  the  hands  of  the  tyrannical,  cruel,  and  unruly 
governor  of  New  Mexico,  Armijo. 

Probably  the  most  interesting  and  valuable  book  on  this 
phase  of  Texan  enterprise,  and  withal  one  having  considerable 
literary  charm,  is  The  Narrative  of  the  Texan  Santa  Fe  Expedi 
tion  (1844)  by  George  Wilkins  Kendall.  Kendall  was  one  of 
the  survivors.  He  was  finally  released  from  the  wretched 
prison  in  Mexico  into  which  he  was  cast  with  others  who  had  not 
succumbed  to  the  desert,  or  to  the  brutality  of  Armijo,  at 
the  request  of  the  United  States  Minister,  Waddy  Thompson, 


The  Santa  Fe  Trail  133 

whose  Recollections  of  Mexico  (1846)  mentions  this  release  of 
Kendall  and  his  companions  in  misery,  as  well  as  the  release  of 
the  prisoners  taken  by  the  Mexicans  at  Mier  in  1842.  The 
capture,  sufferings,  and  release  of  these  latter  unfortunates  are 
told  by  William  Preston  Stapp  in  his  book  The  Prisoners  of 
Perote  ( 1 845) .  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Waddy  Thompson 
was  no  longer  a  United  States  official  when  he  requested  the 
freedom  of  the  captives;  General  Santa  Anna  granted  the 
request  as  a  personal  favour.  Thompson  gives  an  estimate  of 
Santa  Anna's  character  which  is  not  so  black  as  the  usual 
descriptions. 

Kendall  printed  a  map,  which  he  compiled,  to  give  such 
information  as  was  possible  of  the  wilderness  the  caravan  had 
struggled  through,  and  in  this  he  was  aided  by  notes  from 
Josiah  Gregg,  then  living  and  doing  business  as  a  merchant 
at  Santa  Fe.  In  the  year  of  the  appearance  of  Kendall's 
book,  Gregg  alone  published  the  now  famous  volumes  Com 
merce  of  the  Prairies  (1844).  This  is  the  classic  of  the  Plains, 
in  which  he  describes  the  Santa  Fe  Trail  and  its  history. 
The  Atchison,  Topeka,  and  Santa  Fe  Railway  approximately 
follows  the  route  of  the  Santa  Fe  Trail,  and  the  latter  almost 
paralleled  the  great  Kaw  Indian  trail  which  ran  about  four 
or  five  miles  farther  south.  Everywhere  the  possible  high 
ways  had  long  ago  been  traced  out  by  the  Indians,  and  the  main 
routes  of  the  white  men  usually  followed,  with  more  or  less 
exactness,  according  to  method  of  transportation,  these  roads 
of  the  natives. 

Colonel  Henry  Inman,  who  had  early  experience  on  the 
Plains,  wrote  The  Old  Santa  Fe  Trail  (1897).  Some  of  his 
historical  data  are  not  quite  correct,  but  there  is  much  of  value 
derived  from  his  own  knowledge,  and  he  gives  accounts  of  the 
frontiersmen  he  had  met.  With  W.  F.  Cody,  the  last  of  the 
''Buffalo  Bills,"  he  wrote  The  Great  Salt  Lake  Trail  (1898), 
the  trail  being  the  one  from  Omaha  up  the  Platte  and  to  Salt 
Lake  by  way  of  Echo  Canyon.  The  Santa  Fe  Trail  has  also 
been  perpetuated  in  poetry,  by  Sharlot  M.  Hall  with  a  vivid 
poem  of  that  title  in  Out  West  (1903),  and  the  modern  route 
for  automobiles  by  Vachel  Lindsay,  with  a  more  original  poem, 
also  of  that  title,  in  The  Congo  and  Other  Poems  (1914). 

Many  of  the  early  travellers  and  explorers  kept  no  records, 


134      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

and  some  who  did  refrained  from  publishing  until  long  after 
their  experiences,  as  in  the  case  of  Osborne  Russell,  who  had  a 
Rocky  Mountain  career  between  1834  and  1843.  The  Journal 
of  a  Trapper  from  his  pen  did  not  appear  till  1914,  when  it  was 
privately  printed  at  Boise,  Idaho.  These  delays  were  some 
times  due  to  the  reluctance  of  publishers  to  print  the  writings 
of  unknown  and  ' '  unliterary  "  men. 

While  the  Santa  Fe  Trail  linked  the  Missouri  with  the  Rio 
Grande  as  early  as  1822,  there  was  for  a  long  time  no  overland 
highway  to  the  Oregon  country,  the  usual  route  being  up  the 
Missouri  first  by  keelboat  and  then  by  steamboat.  Audubon 
travelled  that  course  in  1843  in  the  steamer  Omega  as  far  as 
Fort  Union,  and  he  kept  a  full  journal.  This  was  mislaid  and 
fifty  years  elapsed  before  it  was  given  to  the  world  in  Audubon 
and  his  Journals  by  his  granddaughter,  Maria  R.  Audubon. 
His  son,  John  Woodhouse  Audubon,  in  1849-50  made  a  jour 
ney  from  New  York  to  Texas  and  thence  overland  through 
Mexico  and  Arizona  to  the  gold  fields  of  California,  which  is 
recorded  in  John  W.  Audubon' s  Western  Journal  (1906),  edited 
by  Frank  H.  Hodder. 

The  literature  connected  with  the  route  up  the  Missouri 
River  is  voluminous  and  it  is  vital  to  the  historical  annals  of  the 
West.  A  great  deal  of  it  falls  before  1846.  H.  M.  Chittenden 
gives  a  History  of  Early  Steamboat  Navigation  of  the  Missouri 
River.  Life  and  Adventures  of  Joseph  La  Barge,  Pioneer  Navi 
gator  and  Indian  Trader  (1903);  and  with  this  title  may  be 
coupled  an  important  paper  on  the  subject  read  by  Phil.  E. 
Chappel  before  the  Kansas  State  Historical  Society  (1904)  and 
printed  in  the  Society's  Publications  (vol.  ix),  with  the  title 
"A  History  of  the  Missouri  River."  He  writes  from  personal 
knowledge  and  adds  a  list  of  the  steamboats. 

A  change  was  coming  in  this  direction.  Notwithstanding 
the  phenomenal  scepticism  as  to  the  value  of  Oregon  displayed 
in  Congress,  the  "common  people"  were  learning  by  word  of 
mouth  from  trappers  and  explorers  that  good  homes  were  to  be 
had  there  for  the  taking.  They  saw  a  vision  of  being  land 
owners — a  vision  that  became  a  life-preserver  amid  the  dis 
comfort,  danger,  and  disaster  which  befell  a  large  proportion  of 
them  in  the  journey  to  the  land  of  promise.  Presently,  from  the 
same  Independence  that  saw  the  wagon  track  vanish  south- 


The  Oregon  Trail  135 

westward  with  its  caravans  for  Santa  Fe,  another  track  faded 
into  the  plains  to  the  north-west  and  hammered  its  devious 
sagebrush  course  over  mountains,  over  valleys,  through  dif 
ficult  canyons,  across  dangerous  rivers  or  deserts  of  death  to 
the  Columbia  River,  to  Oregon,  to  California.  This  was  the 
path  that  Francis  Parkman,1  just  out  of  college,  followed  in 
1846  as  far  as  Fort  Laramie;  an  experience  which  gave  us  The 
California  and  Oregon  Trail  (1849).  Ezra  Meeker  travelled  it 
in  1852  and  back  again  in  1906,  and  in  The  Ox-Team,  or  the  Old 
Oregon  Trail  (1906)  he  relates  what  befell  him  in  this  long,  wild 
journey  with  an  ox-team — a  real  "bull-whacker's"  tale. 

Mrs.  Ann  Boyd  had  experiences  on  this  difficult  highway  in 
the  late  forties,  and  she  presents  the  record  in  The  Oregon  Trail 
(1862).  A  rare  volume  on  the  same  road  is  Joel  Palmer's 
Journal  of  Travels  Over  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Mouth  of  the 
Columbia  River  (1847).  For  those  desiring  to  identify  in  detail 
the  route  and  distances  of  the  Oregon  Trail  of  early  days  there  is 
a  complete  exposition  in  the  masterly  work  by  H.  M.  Chitten- 
den,  History  of  the  American  Fur  Trade  in  the  Far  West  (1902). 

The  chain  binding  Europe  by  the  west  to  Cathay,  of  which 
the  Santa  Fe  and  the  Oregon  trails  were  preliminary  links, 
was  being  forged  to  completion  by  this  steady  march  of  pioneers 
across  the  salubrious  uplands  of  the  Far  West.  At  the  same 
time  the  surrounding  seas  were  breaking  under  the  prows  of 
American  ships.  T.  J.  Jacobs  writes  of  the  cruise  of  the  clipper 
ship  Margaret  Oakley  in  Scenes,  Incidents,  and  Adventures  in 
the  Pacific  Ocean  (1844);  and  the  United  States  government 
took  a  hand  in  maritime  exploration  by  sending  Captain 
Charles  Wilkes  with  six  ships  and  a  large  company  of  scientific 
men  on  an  important  cruise  to  explore  and  survey  the  South 
Seas.  From  Australia,  Wilkes  steered  for  the  South  Pole  and  on 
19  January,  1840,  he  was  the  first  to  see  the  Antarctic  Continent, 
albeit  only  a  very  short  time  before  the  French  navigator 
D'Urville  also  sighted  it.  For  1500  miles  Wilkes  skirted  the 
icy  coast,  and  the  region  he  reported  was  accordingly  named 
Wilkes  Land.  He  also  visited  Hawaii,  California,  and  Oregon, 
carrying  on  some  survey  work  in  the  latter  region.  Five 
volumes  were  published:  The  Narrative  of  the  United  States 
Exploring  Expedition  During  the  Years  1838,  1839,  1840,  1841, 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xv. 


136       Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

1842  (1845),  but  the  scientific  data  have  not  been  issued, 
although  many  of  the  projected  volumes  are  printed.1  There 
is  extant  the  manuscript  journal  of  Captain  Hudson,  who 
commanded  one  of  the  ships ;  and  Lieutenant  (later  Admiral) 
Colvocoresses  attached  to  this  command  published  Four  Years 
in  the  Government  Exploring  Expedition  commanded  by  Captain 
Charles  Wilkes,  etc.  (1852).  They  saw  Antarctic  land  fre 
quently,  and  he  says  that  on  one  day  they  saw  ''distinctly 
from  sixty  to  seventy  miles  of  coast,  and  a  mountain  in  the 
interior  which  we  estimated  to  be  2500  feet  high."  There 
are  in  this  volume  certain  ethnological  notes  on  the  South  Sea 
Islanders  that  are  important. 

Wilkes  also  published  separately  a  volume,  Western  America 
Including  California  and  Oregon  (1849).  Data  on  the  same 
region  are  contained  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  of  the  five  narrative 
volumes. 

A  prominent  American  sailor  on  the  seas  in  the  early  fifties 
and  onward  was  Captain  S.  Samuels.  He  began  his  career  as 
cabin-boy  at  the  age  of  eleven  in  1836,  and  in  ten  years  was  a 
captain.  He  commanded  the  famous  Dreadnaught,  the  swift 
est  ship  of  her  time.  He  tells  a  thrilling  story,  for  which 
Bishop  Potter  wrote  the  introduction,  in  From  the  Forecastle  to 
the  Cabin  (1887). 

South  America  was  not  forgotten  by  our  American  travel 
lers  and  explorers,  and  a  naval  expedition  in  1851-53  carried  on 
an  Exploration  of  the  Valley  of  the  Amazon  (1854)  under  William 
L.  Herndon  and  Lardner  Gibbon,  while,  earlier  than  this,  John 
Lloyd  Stephens  was  investigating  the  intermediate  part  of 
the  Western  Hemisphere,  publishing  his  admirable  results  in 
Incidents  of  Travel  in  Central  America,  Chiapas,  and  Yucatan 
(1841)  and  Incidents  of  Travel  in  Yucatan  (1843).  E.  G.  Squier's 
operations  came  out  in  Nicaragua  (1856)  and  The  States  of 
Central  America  (1858).  Far  away  in  Turkey  the  Rev.  Doctor 
William  Goodell  was  having  the  experiences  which  he  recounts 
in  Forty  Years  in  the  Turkish  Empire  (1876),  edited  by  his 
son-in-law,  E.  D.  G.  Prime.  Dr.  Goodell  belonged  to  a  class 
of  workers,  the  religious  missionaries,  who  travelled  far  and 
wide  seeking  out  all  manner  of  places.  They  also  became 
active  in  the  Far  West  at  an  early  date.  Samuel  Parker  for 

1  For  contents  of  these  volumes  see  MS.  catalogue  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 


The  North- West  137 

the  Presbyterian  Church  went  to  Oregon  in  1836,  taking  with 
him  a  physician,  Marcus  Whitman.  Parker  wrote  A  Journal 
of  an  Exploring  Tour  Beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains  (1838),  one 
of  the  valuable  books  of  the  period.  Whitman  became  so 
deeply  interested  in  the  religious  welfare  of  the  Indians  that  he 
turned  missionary  and  established  a  working  centre  at  Waii- 
latpu.  Later,  in  the  winter  of  1842-43,  he  made  the  now  much 
discussed  overland  journey  by  the  southern  route  to  Washington. 
This  adventure  is  recorded  in  How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  (1895)  by  O.  W.  Nixon.  Whitman  is  said  to  have  ex 
posed  nefarious  British  designs  to  the  American  government, 
but  this  service  has  been  disputed  on  good  authority.  W.  I. 
Marshall  is  one  of  those  who  oppose  the  "saviour"  idea,  and 
he  presents  his  views  in  the  Report  of  the  American  Historical 
Association  (1900)  and  also  in  Acquisition  of  Oregon,  and  the 
Long  Suppressed  Evidence  about  Marcus  Whitman  (1911).  At 
any  rate,  Whitman  was  a  splendid  character  and  devoted  his 
life  to  work  among  the  Indians,  who,  imagining  some  super 
stitious  grievance  against  the  whites,  murdered  many  of  them, 
including  their  own  benefactor  and  his  wife,  and  held  the  others 
prisoners.  M.  Cannon  in  his  account  of  pioneer  days  tells  the 
story  of  this  massacre  in  Waiilatpu,  Its  Rise  and  Fall  (1915). 

The  captives  were  rescued  by  the  skill  and  determined 
bearing  of  one  of  the  greatest  frontiersmen  of  the  West,  Peter 
Skene  Ogden.  Ogden,  while  not  an  American,  was  next  thing 
to  it,  as  his  father  was  born  in  Newark,  New  Jersey,  but  the 
family,  being  royalists,  travelled  to  more  genial  climes  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  trouble  with  George  III.  T.  C.  Elliott,  in  a  very 
entertaining  and  instructive  pamphlet,  Peter  Skene  Ogden,  Fur 
Trader  (1910),  relates  the  remarkable  career  of  Ogden,  chiefly 
in  the  region  south  of  the  forty-ninth  parallel.  Ogden  wrote 
Traits  of  American  Indian  Life  and  Character  by  a  Fur  Trader 
(1853),  revised  in  manuscript  by  Jesse  Applegate.  Ogden  is 
said  to  have  taken  it  to  Washington  Irving,  who  was  prevented 
by  circumstances  from  editing  it. 

Most  of  the  travellers  who  penetrated  the  Western  wilder 
ness  in  those  early  days  were  close  and  quite  accurate  observers, 
and  many  of  their  books,  like  Gregg's  and  Kendall's  and  Edwin 
Bryant's,  have  become  of  immeasurable  historical  value. 
Another  whose  works  take  a  similar  high  place  is  Thomas 


138      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

Jefferson  Farnham.  No  library  of  Americana  can  be  con 
sidered  complete  which  lacks  his  Travels  in  the  Great  Western 
Prairies,  the  Anahuac  and  Rocky  Mountains  and  in  the  Oregon 
Territory  (1843),  and  his  Life,  Adventures  and  Travels  in  Cali 
fornia  (1849).  Farnham  followed  some  seldom  travelled 
trails,  and  he  tells  not  only  what  he  saw  but  what  he  heard — 
giving  in  the  latter  field  one  of  the  early  descriptions  of  the 
Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado,  not  accurate  but  interesting. 
A  missionary  who  roamed  widely  over  Oregon  was  Father  P.  J. 
De  Smet,  and  his  writings  are  among  the  most  vital,  especially 
Oregon  Missions  and  Travels  over  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  1845- 
46  (1847)  and  Letters  and  Sketches  (1843). 

The  Santa  Fe  Trail  coupled  the  Rio  Grande  and  the  mighty 
Missouri,  as  has  been  mentioned,  by  a  well-beaten  and  more  or 
less  easy  and  comfortable  way  which  halted  at  the  city  of  Santa 
Fe.  Thence  on  to  Los  Angeles  there  were  two  or  three  routes 
open  to  the  traveller,  taking  any  one  of  which  was  sure  to  make 
him  wish  he  had  chosen  another.  One  led  down  the  Rio 
Grande  into  Mexico,  thence  westward  and  up  to  the  Gila 
through  Tucson,  following  the  Gila  on  west  to  the  Colorado,  the 
Mohave  desert,  and  to  Cajon  Pass ;  the  other  turned  north  from 
Santa  Fe  and  straggled  over  the  mountains,  to  cross  the  Grand 
River  and  the  Green  at  the  first  opportunity  the  canyons 
permitted  (that  on  the  Green  being  at  what  was  afterwards 
known  as  Gunnison  Crossing),  thence  through  the  Wasatch, 
down  to  the  Virgin,  and  by  that  stream  to  the  Mohave  desert, 
and  across  that  stretch  of  Hades  by  the  grace  of  God.  This 
trail  was  laid  out  in  1830  by  William  Wolf  skill,  an  American, 
but  as  it  was  travelled  mostly  by  Spaniards  it  was  called  the 
Spanish  Trail.  Between  this  and  the  extreme  southern  route 
was  a  possible  way  down  the  Gila,  and  another  between  that 
and  the  majestic  Grand  Canyon,  followed  in  1776  eastward 
as  far  as  the  Hopi  (Moqui)  villages  by  Garces  the  Spanish 
missionary ;  but  to  take  either  intermediate  route  at  that  time 
was  almost  like  signing  one's  death  warrant.  They  were  not 
often  taken  before  1846.  Much  about  the  early  trails  and 
trappers  and  missionaries  is  told  in  Breaking  the  Wilderness 
(1905)  by  Frederick  S.  Dellenbaugh. 

The  Oregon  Trail,  bearing  far  to  the  north,  through  South 
Pass  and  down  Snake  River,  was  extended  to  the  Columbia  and 


Early  California  139 

thence  around  south  to  California,  but,  before  the  "Days  of 
'49,"  although  Ogden,  Jedediah  Smith,  and  Fremont  had 
dared  the  mid-passage  across  the  Great  Basin,  there  was  no  real 
route  directly  to  the  rich,  inviting  mission  settlements  of  the 
Franciscan  friars:  settlements  that  were  a  world  unto  them 
selves  delightfully  described  by  Alfred  Robinson  in  Life  in 
California  During  a  Residence  of  Several  Years  in  that  Territory, 
Etc.  By  an  American  (1846).  And  in  Two  Years  Before  the 
Mast  (1840)  R.  H.  Dana  has  some  interesting  chapters  on  this 
primitive  California  paradise.  The  historical  side  is  presented 
by  Fr.  Zephyrin  Englehardt  in  an  extensive  work,  The  Missions 
and  Missionaries  of  California  (1911). 

In  the  early  forties  California  was  nothing  more  than  a 
detached  colony  nominally  belonging  to  Mexico  but  ruled 
over,  so  far  as  it  was  ruled  at  all,  by  the  Mission  friars  and  the 
military  governor  in  an  arbitrary  and  personal  fashion.  Its 
rich  soil  and  attractive  coast  were  coveted  by  France,  by 
Great  Britain,  and  by  the  United  States.  This  great  prize 
slipping  from  Mexico's  fist  had  its  northern  limit  at  the  forty- 
second  parallel  and  its  eastern  along  the  upper  Arkansas  and 
down  that  river  to  the  rooth  meridian,  down  that  to  Red  River, 
along  that  stream  to  a  point  north  of  the  Sabine,  and  by  the 
Sabine  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Texas  took  away  the  portion 
from  the  Sabine  to  the  Nueces  and  claimed  to  the  Rio  Grande. 
Thus  matters  stood  at  the  time  of  the  annexation  of  Texas, 
with  its  claim  of  a  western  boundary  at  the  Rio  Grande  which 
the  United  States  had  undertaken  to  maintain  with  the 
sword. 

There  was  one  statesman  in  Congress  who  had  a  clear  per 
ception  of  conditions  and  possibilities.  This  was  Thomas 
Hart  Benton,  whose  home  was  in  St.  Louis  and  was  the  rendez 
vous  for  leading  trappers  and  explorers.  His  famous  phrase 
as  he  pointed  to  the  sunset  and  said  "There  lies  the  road  to 
India"  recognized  the  approach  to  each  other  of  Europe  and 
Cathay  westward  across  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  has  appro 
priately  been  carved  on  his  monument.  In  his  Thirty  Years' 
View  .  .  .  1820  to  1850  (1861)  there  is  continual  evidence  of  his 
firm  belief  in  the  phenomenal  value  of  the  Far  West  region  and 
in  a  development  which  has  since  taken  place.  Benton  was  one 
of  the  chief  political  figures  of  the  time.  Biographies  of  him 


i4«     Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

have  been  written  by  Theodore  Roosevelt  (1887)  and  by 
William  M.  Meigs  (1904). 

As  the  fourth  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  opened, 
California  was  receiving  many  emigrants  from  the  Eastern 
States ,  chiefly  by  the  Oregon  Trail.  About  this  time  appears  on 
the  scene  a  striking  personality,  John  A.  Sutter,  independent, 
indefatigable,  who  immediately  created  a  unique  fortified  set 
tlement  which,  having  been  born  in  Switzerland,  he  called  New 
Helvetia,  but  which  was  known  generally  as  Sutter's  Fort. 
It  was  begun  in  1841  and  completed  in  1845,  on  the  site  of  the 
present  city  of  Sacramento.  Although  Sutter  was  Swiss  he 
may  be  classed  as  an  American  in  view  of  all  the  circumstances 
connected  with  his  life.  His  fort  mounted  carronades  and 
cannon  and  was  garrisoned  by  about  forty  well  armed,  drilled, 
uniformed  Indians.  There  were  extra  arms  for  more  if  needed. 
In  his  "Diary"1  printed  in  the  Argonaut  (San  Francisco,  26 
Jan.,  2,  9,  1 6  Feb.,  1878)  Sutter  tells  of  his  own  doings,  and 
in  the  Life  and  Times  of  John  A .  Sutter  (1907)  T.  J.  Schoon- 
over  relates  the  entire  story  of  this  remarkable  pioneer,  the 
good  friend  of  everybody  but  " bankrupted  by  thieves." 

By  1846  the  dispute  with  Great  Britain  over  Oregon  was  set 
tled  and  the  Americans  there  knew  where  they  belonged.  They 
had  been  warmly  defended  and  assisted  by  the  then  head  of 
Hudson  Bay  Company  affairs  in  that  region,  John  McLoughlin, 
who  himself  finally  became  an  American.  The  story  of  his  life 
is  given  by  Frederick  V.  Holman,  John  McLoughlin,  The  Father 
of  Oregon  (1900),  and  in  McLoughlin  and  Old  Oregon  (1900)  by 
Mrs.  Emery  Dye. 

Benton's  son-in-law,  John  C.  Fremont,  had  conducted  an 
expedition  in  1842  along  the  Oregon  Trail  to  the  Wind  River 
Mountains,  and  he  was  selected  to  carry  on  a  new  reconnais 
sance,  ostensibly  to  connect  the  survey  of  the  Oregon  Trail 
with  survey  work  done  on  the  Pacific  Coast  by  Wilkes.  But 
this  1843-44  expedition  did  not  halt  in  Oregon.  It  headed 
southward  into  Mexican  territory  along  the  eastern  edge  of  the 
Sierras,  hunting  for  a  mythical  Buenaventura  River  that 
would  have  made  a  fine  military  base  had  it  existed.  Not 
discovering  that  entrancing  Elysian  valley,  Fremont  crossed  the 
high  Sierras  in  dead  winter  to  Sutter's  Fort,  returning  by  the 

1  See  also  Reminiscences  in  MS.,  Bancroft  Collection. 


Early  California  I4I 

Spanish  Trail  to  Utah  and  breaking  through  the  Wasatch  east 
of  Utah  Lake.  His  Report  of  the  Exploring  Expedition  to  the 
Rocky  Mountains  in  the  Year  1842  and  to  Oregon  and  Northern 
California  in  the  Years  1843-44  (1845)  was  a  revelation  to 
most  of  the  world.  Ten  thousand  copies  were  printed  by  the 
government,  and  it  was  reprinted  by  professional  publishers, 
minus  the  scientific  matter,  in  their  regular  lists. 

The  very  day  Fremont  handed  in  this  report,  I  March,  1845, 
the  United  States  flung  the  gauntlet  in  the  face  of  Mexico  by 
admitting  Texas  and  assuming  the  Texan  boundary  affair. 
War  was  inevitable  and  everybody  knew  it.  Therefore  when 
Fremont  headed  a  new  " topographical  surveying"  expedition 
to  the  Far  West  he  had  a  force  of  sixty  well-armed  marksmen. 
When  he  reached  California  and  found  an  incipient  rebellion 
already  organized  by  Americans,  he  placed  himself  with  this 
powerful  party  and  the  American  flag  at  its  head,  supplanting 
the  Bear  Flag  of  the  revolutionists  and  giving  immediate  notice 
thereby  to  the  other  covetous  nations  that  California  was  only 
for  the  United  States. 

The  Bear  Flag  revolt  from  its  beginning  may  be  studied  in 
Scraps  of  California  History  Never  Before  Published.  A  Bio 
graphical  Sketch  of  William  B.  Ide,  etc.  (1880),  privately  printed 
by  Simeon  Ide.  In  H.  H.  Bancroft's  History  of  California,  vol. 
v,  is  another  account ;  and  the  revolt  and  Fremont  are  sharply 
criticized  by  Josiah  Royce  in  California  from  the  Conquest  in 
1 8 46  to  the  Second  Vigilance  Committee  in  San  Francisco  (1888). 
Royce  also  gave  his  analysis  of  Fremont's  character  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  in  1890. 

Fremont  tells  his  own  story  in  Memoirs  of  My  Life  (1887; 
only  vol.  I  of  the  projected  two  volumes  was  published). 
This  contains  a  sketch  of  "The  Life  of  Senator  Ben  ton  in  Con 
nection  with  Western  Explorations"  from  the  pen  of  his 
daughter,  Jessie  Ben  ton  Fremont.  Fremont's  career  up  to  the 
time  he  ran  for  President  was  written  by  John  Bigelow  as  a 
campaign  document  in  1856:  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  John  C. 
Fremont.  Another  Life  of  Fremont  (1856)  is  by  Charles  W. 
Upham,  but  there  was  no  single  volume  containing  all  the 
story  of  this  active  explorer  and  politician  till  Fremont  and  '49, 
by  Frederick  S.  Dellenbaugh,  appeared  in  1914. 

California  now  attracted  world  attention,  and  there  are  a 


142      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

great  number  of  interesting  and  valuable  books  relating  to  it. 
Los  Gringos  (1849),  by  Lieutenant  Wise,  U.  S.  N.,  describes 
the  cruise  of  an  American  man-of-war  which  took  active  part 
in  the  conquest  along  the  coast.  One  of  the  most  trustworthy 
of  all  the  volumes  of  this  period  is  by  Edwin  Bryant,  "late 
Alcalde  of  San  Francisco,"  What  I  saw  in  California  in  1846- 
184.7  (1848).  This  will  always  stand  in  the  first  rank  of  West 
ern  Americana,  with  Farnham,  Gregg,  etc.  Bryant  was  in 
Fremont's  California  Battalion  during  the  conquest.  The  book 
has  been  cheaply  reprinted,  with  a  "blood  and  thunder"  title- 
page  supplanting  the  original,  as  Rocky  Mountain  Adventures 


While  the  conquest  of  California  was  proceeding  to  its 
logical  end  an  agricultural  conquest  of  the  valley  of  the  Great 
Salt  Lake  was  begun  by  the  Mormons,  or  Latter  Day  Saints  as 
they  called  themselves.  Their  late  neighbours  in  Illinois  had 
inaugurated  such  great  opposition  to  Mormon  methods  that 
it  culminated  in  the  murder,  by  a  mob,  in  Carthage  jail,  of 
Joseph  Smith,  the  prophet  and  originator  of  the  sect,  and  a 
migration  was  imperative.  The  Mormons  now  possessed  a 
martyr,  the  essential  basis  of  religious  success,  and  they  needed 
an  independent  field  for  expansion.  Their  new  leader,  Brigham 
Young,  discovered  it  in  the  Salfr  Lake  Valley  described  glow 
ingly  in  Fremont's  report.  Brigham  thought  of  founding  a 
separate  state  in  this  Mexican  territory,  but  the  events  of  the 
Mexican  war  moved  so  rapidly  that,  even  while  he  planned, 
the  valley  fell  under  American  rule.  The  Mormons  went 
forward  nevertheless  and  arrived  on  the  shore  of  the  American 
Dead  Sea  in  August,  1847.  Brigham  complained  that  the 
valley  was  not  as  represented  by  Fremont  —  that  it  was  really  a 
desert.  Fremont  had  seen  on  the  Rio  Grande  what  irrigation 
can  do,  and  the  Mormons  resorted  to  it  with  an  agricultural 
success  now  well  known. 

The  transit  to  the  new  home  across  the  wide  and  unsettled 
plains  and  mountains  was  a  huge  undertaking  and  entailed 
much  hardship.  T.  L.  Kane,  a  non-Mormon,  accompanied 
the  famous  "hand  cart  expedition"  and  tells  about  it  in  The 
Mormons  (1850).  The  literature  connected  with  the  Mormons 
is  voluminous.  One  of  the  latest,  most  comprehensive,  and  most 
exact  general  books  is  W.  J.  Linn's  Story  of  the  Mormons  (1902). 


Mexico  and  California  r43 

It  has  been  charged  that  the  Mormon  leaders  employed  a  gang 
of  cut-throats  to  discourage  Gentiles  from  settling  among  them, 
and  Bill  Hickman,  when  he  became  an  apostate,  claimed  to  have 
been  the  leader  of  it.  He  issued  a  book,  Brigham's  Destroying 
Angel  Being  the  Life  Confession  and  Startling  Disclosures  of  the 
Notorious  Bill  Hickman  Written  by  Himself  with  Explanatory 
Notes  by  J.  H.  Beadle  (1872).  Beadle  also  published  Western 
Wilds  (1877),  Life  in  Utah  (1870),  The  Undeveloped  West  (1873), 
and  "The  Story  of  Marcus  Whitman  Refuted"  in  American 
Catholic  Historical  Researches  (1879).  Mrs.  Stenhouse,  who 
apostatized,  wrote  Tell  it  All  (1874),  a  faithful  account  of  her 
sad  life  as  a  Mormon. 

While  Fremont  was  aiding  Commodore  Stockton  to  clinch 
the  claim  of  the  United  States  to  California,  the  history  of 
which  is  told  in  Despatches  Relating  to  Military  and  Naval 
Operations  in  California  (1849)  and  in  A  Sketch  of  the  Life  of 
R.  F.  Stockton  with  his  Correspondence  with  the  Navy  Department 
Respecting  his  Conquest  of  California  and  the  Defense  of  J.  C. 
Fremont  (1856),  the  war  in  Mexico  was  in  full  swing.  General 
Stephen  Kearny,  with  an  army,  was  marching  overland  for 
the  Pacific  Coast  by  way  of  Santa  Fe,  where  he  halted  long 
enough  to  raise  the  flag  and  destroy  opposition. 

Kearny  was  a  noble  officer  whose  early  death  in  the  Mexican 
campaign  prevented  his  writing  about  the  California  campaign. 
Valentine  Mott  Porter  wrote  a  sketch  of  him  in  Publications  of 
the  Historical  Society  of  Southern  California,  vol.  vin  (1911); 
and  A  Diary  of  the  March  with  Kearny,  Fort  Leavenworth  to 
Santa  Fe  (1846)  by  G.  R.  Gibson  gives  details  concerning  that 
part  of  the  journey.  Gibson  also  wrote  two  other  diaries  on  a 
trip  to  Chihuahua  and  return  in  1 847.  The  journals  of  Captain 
Johnson  and  of  Colonel  P.  St.  George  Cooke  on  the  march  from 
Santa  Fe  to  California  appeared  in  House  Executive  Document 
41,  ist  Sess.joth  Congress,  and  Colonel  Cooke's  "The  Journal  of 
a  March  from  Santa  Fe  to  San  Diego  1846-47"  was  printed  in 
Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  2  Special  Sess.  $ist  Cong.  Other  literary  pro 
ductions  of  Colonel  Cooke  were  The  Conquest  of  New  Mexico 
and  California  (1878)  and  Scenes  and  Adventures  in  Army  Life 

(1857). 

Kearny,  before  proceeding  to  California,  planned  for  the 
holding  of  New  Mexico,  and  one  of  the  memorable  expeditions 


144     Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

of  the  war  resulted,  that  of  Colonel  A.  W.  Doniphan.  It  was 
accurately  recorded  by  John  T.  Hughes  in  Doniphan' s  Expedi 
tion;  Containing  an  Account  of  the  Conquest  of  New  Mexico, 
General  Kearny's  Overland  Expedition  to  California,  Doniphan' s 
Campaign  Against  the  Navajos,  his  Unparalleled  March  upon 
Chihuahua  and  Durango  and  the  Operations  of  General  Price  at 
Santa  Fe,  with  a  Sketch  of  the  Life  of  Colonel  Doniphan  (1847). 
Hughes  wrote  another  book  now  very  hard  to  obtain,  California, 
Its  History,  Population,  Climate,  Soil,  Productions,  and  Har 
bours,  and  an  Account  of  the  Revolution  in  California  and  the 
Conquest  of  the  Country  by  the  United  States,  1846-47  (1848). 

William  E.  Connelley  has  reprinted  the  Hughes  Doniphan 
with  Hughes's  diary  and  other  related  matter  in  Doniphan's 
Expedition  ( 1 907) .  With  the  advance  guard  of  the  Army  of  the 
West  went  Major  William  H.  Emory,  and  his  Notes  of  a  Military 
Reconnaissance  from  Fort  Leavenworth  to  San  Diego,  California, 
1846-47  (1848)  is  an  important  contribution  to  the  documents 
on  this  famous  march. 

The  Rev.  Walter  Colton  was  in  California  before  the  con 
quest  and  he  wrote  an  exceedingly  valuable  book,  Three  Years  in 
California,  1846-49  (1850),  as  well  as  another,  Deck  and  Port, 
or  Incidents  of  a,  Cruise  in  the  United  States  Frigate  Congress,  etc. 
(i  850).  Still  another  volume  of  this  period  is  Notes  on  a  Voyage 
to  California  Together  with  Scenes  in  Eldorado  in  1849  (1878) 
by  S.  C.  Upham.  The  name  Eldorado  enters  so  commonly 
into  the  literature  of  the  Far  West  that  we  may  at  this  point 
note  the  volume  The  Gilded  Man  (1893),  by  A.  F.  Bandelier, 
which  describes  and  explains  the  term  and  its  origin.  In  a  cer 
tain  ceremonial  in  Peru  a  man  was  covered  from  head  to  foot 
with  gold  dust  and  this  gave  rise  to  the  expression  as  meaning 
fabulous  wealth. 

With  the  prospect  of  closer  contact  with  the  Orient  by  way 
of  the  Occident,  relations  with  some  of  the  far  off  Eastern  coun 
tries  began  to  be  more  intimately  considered.  Caleb  Cushing 
as  Commissioner  of  the  United  States  went  to  China  in  1843  and 
in  1845  negotiated  the  first  treaty  between  the  United  States 
and  China.  Missionaries,  too,  were  at  their  task.  Volumes 
of  the  Chinese  Repository  edited  by  Dr.  Bridgman  were  pub 
lishing  at  Canton,  and  from  these  volumes,  and  his  own  personal 
observation  and  study  of  native  authorities  for  twelve  years, 


Gold  in  California  J45 

S.  Wells  Williams,  who  went  to  China  as  a  printer  for  the  Board 
of  Foreign  Missions,  who  mastered  the  Chinese  language,  and 
who  lectured  in  the  United  States  to  obtain  money  to  pay  for  a 
font  of  Chinese  type,  produced  The  Middle  Kingdom.  A  Sur 
vey  of  the  Geography,  Government,  Education,  Social  Life,  Arts, 
Religion,  etc.,  of  the  Chinese  Empire  and  its  Inhabitants  (1848), 
a  book  that  remains  today  one  of  the  supreme  authorities  on 
the  subject. 

Another  traveller  in  that  region  was  the  afterwards  eccen 
tric  George  Francis  Train.  Only  twenty-four  years  of  age, 
he  met  with  much  success  in  commercial  ventures  in  China, 
and  a  book  was  the  outcome :  An  American  Merchant  in  Europe, 
Asia,  and  Australia  (1857).  The  last  years  of  Tram's  life  were 
mainly  spent  on  a  bench  in  Madison  Square  Park,  New  York, 
refusing  conversation  with  all  adults. 

The  year  following  the  conclusion  of  the  Mexican  War,  which 
completed  the  sway  of  the  United  States  over  the  entire  West 
between  the  Gila  River  and  the  forty-ninth  parallel,  one  of  the 
large  events  of  the  world  happened.  A  certain  Marshall  was 
employed  by  Sutter  in  the  construction  of  a  saw-mill  up  in  the 
mountains,  and  one  morning  in  January,  1848,  when  he  picked 
from  the  sluiceway  a  particle  of  metal  half  the  size  of  a  pea,  shin 
ing  in  the  sun,  it  made  his  heart  thump,  for  he  believed  it  to  be 
gold.  Gold  it  proved  to  be.  The  great  news  was  quick  in  reach 
ing  the  outermost  ends  of  the  earth,  calling  men  of  all  kinds, 
of  all  nationalities,  pell-mell  to  Eldorado  to  pick  up  a  fortune. 
Men  of  Cathay,  men  of  Europe,  men  of  the  Red  Indian  race, 
all  mingled  on  common  terms  in  the  scramble.  Centuries  of 
creeping  along  the  fortieth  parallel  had  at  last  tied  together 
the  far  ends  of  the  earth.  "Marshall's  Own  Account  of  the 
Gold  Discovery"  appeared  in  The  Century  Magazine,  vol. 
xix.  Gold  had  been  discovered  some  years  before,  but  the 
psychological  moment  had  not  arrived  for  its  exploitation.  A 
vast  literature  developed  on  the  subject,  one  of  the  earliest  books 
being  The  Emigrant's  Guide  to  the  Gold  Mines,  and  Adventures 
with  the  Gold  Diggers  of  California  in  August  1848  (1848),  by 
Henry  I.  Simpson,  of  the  New  York  Volunteers.  This  book 
has  become  rare.  Another  early  but  not  scarce  "gold"  item 
is  Theodore  T.  Johnson's  Sights  and  Scenes  in  the  Gold  Regions, 
and  Scenes  by  the  Way  (1849). 


VOL.  Ill — IO 


146      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

The  gold  seekers  got  as  far  as  Salt  Lake  over  the  Oregon 
Trail  by  Bear  River;  or  from  Ft.  Bridger  by  the  new  way  Hast 
ings  had  found  a  little  farther  south,  and  more  direct,  through 
Echo  Canyon.  From  Salt  Lake  the  chief  trail  west  led  down 
the  Humboldt  River  to  the  Sierra  and  over  that  mighty  barrier 
by  what  became  known  as  Donner  Pass  to  commemorate  the 
Donner  party  and  the  shocking  result  of  their  miscalculation, 
the  details  of  which  are  given  in  The  Expedition  of  the  Donner 
Party  and  its  Tragic  Fate  (1911)  by  Mrs.  Eliza  P.  Donner 
Hough  ton.  "The  Diary  of  one  of  the  Donner  Party  "  by  Pat 
rick  Breen,  edited  by  F.  J.  Taggart,  is  given  in  Publications  of 
Pacific  Coast  History,  vol.  v.  (1910);  and  C.  F.  McGlashan 
published  a  History  of  the  Donner  Party  (1880).  This  ill-fated 
caravan  originated  in  Illinois.  John  Carroll  Power  in  a  History 
of  the  Early  Settlers  of  Sangamon  County,  III.  (1876)  gives  the 
daily  journal  of  the  "Reed  and  Donner  Emigrating  Party." 

The  difficulties  of  travel  by  ox  and  mule  team,  the  necessity 
of  obtaining  communication  better  from  a  military  point  of  view, 
and  other  considerations  led  to  talk  of  a  railway  to  California. 
George  Wilkes  published  in  1845  a  volume  now  rare,  Project  of  a 
National  Railroad  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  for  the 
Purpose  of  Obtaining  a  Short  Route  to  Oregon.  In  1848,  Asa 
Whitney  made  addresses,  memorials,  and  petitions  for  a  trans 
continental  railway,  and  he  gave  his  plan  in  a  Congressional 
document,  Miscellaneous  28,  Senate,  joth  Congress  i:  "Me 
morial  of  Asa  Whitney  for  grants  of  land  to  enable  him  to  build 
a  railway  from  Lake  Michigan  to  the  Pacific. ' '  Whitney  issued 
a  volume  in  the  same  line,  from  personal  exploration:  Project 
for  a  Railroad  to  the  Pacific  with  Reports  and  Other  Facts  Relating 
Thereto  (1849). 

No  one  was  more  enthusiastic  or  confident  of  the  feasibility 
of  a  railway  than  Fremont,  unless  it  was  his  father-in-law,  Ben- 
ton.  They  were  both  positive  that  neither  rivers,  nor  hot 
deserts,  nor  the  deep  mountain  snows  of  winter  would  interfere 
seriously  with  the  operation  of  trains.  Fremont  projected  his 
fourth  expedition  especially  to  prove  that  winter  would  be  no 
obstacle,  and  he  attempted  crossing  the  highest  mountains  in 
the  winter  of  1848-49.  He  met  with  sad  disaster  in  Colorado, 
for  which  he  blamed  the  guide  for  misleading  him.  This 
dreadful  experience  he  describes  in  his  Memoirs,  and  it  is 


The  Indians  T47 

related  in  other  books  on  Fremont's  expeditions;  and  Micajah 
McGehee,  who  was  of  the  party,  gives  all  the  terror  of  their 
struggle  in  " Rough  Times  in  Rough  Places"  in  The  Century 
Magazine,  vol.  xix.  After  this  catastrophe  Fremont  pro 
ceeded  to*  California  by  the  far  southern  route  of  upper  Mexico 
and  the  Gila,  arriving  just  as  the  great  gold  excitement  was  in 
its  first  heat. 

Thousands  were  now  preparing  to  follow  thousands  to  the 
fortune-field  that  lay  against  what  Fremont  previously  had 
named  the  Golden  Gate.  It  mattered  not  that  the  way  was 
beset  with  impossibilities  for  the  greenhorn  (or  in  later  nomen 
clature,  the  tenderfoot) ;  to  California  he  was  bound  through 
fair  and  foul.  Not  the  least  of  the  troubles  arose  from  Indians, 
those  people  who  already  possessed  the  country  and  were 
satisfied  with  it.  They  disliked  to  see  their  game  destroyed 
by  these  new  hordes,  their  springs  polluted  by  cattle,  their 
families  treated  with  brutality  or  contempt  according  to  the 
physical  strength  of  the  pioneer  party.  The  latter  on  their 
part  regarded  the  Indians  as  merely  a  dangerous  nuisance,  to  be 
got  rid  of  by  any  possible  means.  Sometimes  when  the  trap 
per's  or  pioneer's  confidence  ran  high  with  power,  the  Indian, 
armed  only  with  a  bow  and  arrows,  was  pursued  and  shot  as 
sport  from  horseback,  just  as  the  sportsman  chases  antelope 
or  buffalo. 

The  misconception  of  Indian  life  and  character  so  common 
among  the  white  people  [remarks  Francis  LaFlesche,  himself  an 
Indian,  in  his  preface  to  his  charming  little  story  of  his  boy  life,  The 
Middle  Five:  Indian  Boys  at  School  (1900)]  has  been  largely  due  to 
ignorance  of  the  Indian's  language,  of  his  mode  of  thought,  his 
beliefs,  his  ideals,  and  his  native  institutions. 

We  have  heretofore  viewed  the  Indians  chiefly  through  the 
eyes  of  those  who  were  interested  in  exploiting  them;  or  of 
exterminating  them.  Perhaps  it  is  time  to  listen  to  their 
own  words. 

Another  educated  Indian,  Dr.  Charles  A.  Eastman  (Ohi- 
yesa),  a  full -blood  Sioux,  writing  on  this  subject  in  The  Soul  of 
the  Indian  (1900),  declares: 

The  native  American  has  been  generally  despised  by  his  white 
conquerors  for  his  poverty  and  simplicity.  They  forget,  perhaps, 


148       Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

that  his  religion  forbade  the  accumulation  of  wealth  and  the  enjoy 
ment  of  luxury.  To  him  as  to  other  single  minded  men  in  every 
age  and  race,  from  Diogenes  to  the  brothers  of  Saint  Francis,  from 
the  Montanists  to  the  Shakers,  the  love  of  possessions  has  appeared 
a  snare,  and  the  burdens  of  a  complex  society  a  source  of  needless 
peril  and  temptation.  It  is  my  personal  belief  after  thirty-five 
years  experience  of  it,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  Christian 
Civilization.  I  believe  that  Christianity  and  modern  civilization 
are  opposed  and  irreconcilable  and  that  the  spirit  of  Christianity 
and  of  our  ancient  religion  is  essentially  the  same.  .  .  .  Since  there  is 
nothing  left  us  but  remembrance,  at  least  let  that  remembrance  be 
just. 

With  reference  to  the  treachery  of  the  whites,  at  times, 
in  the  treatment  of  Indians  it  is  permissible  to  refer  the  reader 
to  the  Massacre  of  Cheyenne  Indians,  j8th  Congress,  2nd  Sess., 
House  Doc.,  Jan.  loth,  1865,  wherein  the  Committee  on  the 
Conduct  of  the  War,  Benjamin  F.  Wade,  Chairman,  reports  on 
an  unprovoked  attack  by  Colorado  militia  on  a  Cheyenne 
village  in  which  sixty -nine,  two  thirds  women  and  children, 
were  killed  and  the  bodies  left  on  the  field. 

The  Indian  side  of  much  of  the  trouble  of  the  years  following 
1 86 1  may  be  read  in  * '  Forty  Years  with  the  Cheyennes,"  written 
by  George  Bent  for  The  Frontier,  a  Colorado  Springs  monthly. 
Bent's  mother  was  Owl  Woman  of  the  Southern  Cheyennes, 
and  his  father,  Col.  William  Bent,  the  widely  known  proprietor 
of  Bent's  Fort  on  the  Arkansas,  also  called  Fort  William. 
Young  Bent  left  school  to  join  the  Confederate  army,  was 
captured,  paroled,  and  sent  to  his  father.  He  then  went  to  his 
mother's  people  and  remained  with  them. 

There  was  at  least  one  American  of  early  Western  days  who 
looked  on  the  Indian  with  more  sympathy.  This  was  George 
Catlin,  now  famous  for  his  paintings  and  books.  Thanks  to  a 
kind  Providence,  not  to  our  foresight,  his  invaluable  painted 
records  of  a  life  that  is  past  are  now  the  property  of  the  United 
States.  Thomas  Donaldson  gives  an  exhaustive  review  of 
Catlin,  his  paintings  in  the  National  Museum,  and  his  books 
in  Part  V,  Report  of  the  U.  S.  National  Museum  (1885). 

We  are  not  here  concerned  with  Catlin 's  paintings  and  only 
note  his  literary  output.  His  Letters  and  Notes  on  the  Manners 
and  Customs  of  the  North  American  Indians,  Written  During 


George  Catlin  J49 

Eight  Years  Travel  Among  the  Wildest  Tribes  of  Indians  in  North 
America  in  1832,  33,  34,  35,  36,  37,  38,  and  39,  with  Four  Hun 
dred  Illustrations  Carefully  Engraved  from  his  Original  Paintings 
was  published  first  in  London,  at  his  own  expense,  in  1841. 
The  same  year  it  was  brought  out  in  New  York.  Another'  of 
his  volumes  was  Catlin' s  Notes  of  Eight  Years  Travels  and 
Residence  in  Europe  with  his  North  American  Indian  Collection, 
with  Anecdotes  and  Adventures  of  Three  Different  Parties  of 
American  Indians  whom  he  Introduced  to  the  Courts  of  England, 
France  and  Belgium  (1848).  A  book  of  his  that  raised  strong 
doubts  as  to  his  veracity  was  Okeepa,  A  Religious  Ceremony,  and 
other  Customs  of  the  Mandans,  which  was  published  in  Philadel 
phia  in  1867,  and  gave  one  of  the  earliest  accounts  of  the  extra 
ordinary  Okeepa  ceremonial :  a  self-sacrificial  affair  akin  to  the 
Sun  Dance  of  the  Dakotas.  The  book  today  is  recognized  as 
veracious  and  valuable.  He  wrote  Life  among  the  Indians 
(1861)  for  young  folk,  and  in  1837  he  brought  out  a  Catalogue  of 
Catliris  Indian  Gallery  of  Portraits,  Landscapes,  Manners, 
Customs,  and  Costumes,  etc.  His  well-known,  and  now  rare, 
North  American  Indian  Portfolio,  Twenty -five  large  Tinted 
Drawings  on  Stone,  some  Coloured  by  Hand  in  Imitation  of  the 
Author's  Sketches,  appeared  in  London  in  1844;  his  Steam  Raft 
in  1850;  Shut  your  Mouth  in  1865;  and  Last  Rambles  amongst 
the  Indians  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  Andes  in  London 
in  1868. 

His  viewpoint  was  totally  different  from  that  of  the  trapper 
or  pioneer,  explorer  or  traveller.  Catlin  was  interested  in  the 
Indian  as  a  man.  "The  Indians  have  always  loved  me,"  he 
declares,  ' '  and  why  should  I  not  love  the  Indians  ? ' '  He  wrote 
a  ''Creed,"  part  of  which  was:  "I  love  the  people  who  have 
always  made  me  welcome  to  the  best  they  had.  I  love  the 
people  who  have  never  raised  a  hand  against  me,  or  stolen  my 
property,  where  there  was  no  law  to  punish  for  either." 

The  Mormons  soon  adopted  a  conciliatory  policy  towards 
the  Indians,  feeling  it  was  more  profitable  to  deal  justly  with 
them,  to  pay  them,  than  to  fight  them.  It  was  obligatory  to 
have  a  cool  clear-headed  man  to  carry  out  such  a  policy,  and 
Brigham  Young  selected  Jacob  Hamblin  for  the  service.  No 
better  choice  could  have  been  made.  Slow  of  speech,  quick  of 
thought  and  action,  this  Leatherstocking  of  Utah  was  usually 


150      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

called  "Old  Jacob."  He  tells  an  interesting  story  through 
James  A.  Little  in  Jacob  Hamblin,  a  Narrative  of  his  Personal 
Experiences  (1881).  A  devoted  Mormon,  he  was  never  un 
friendly  to  other  sects  and  often  assisted  persons  of  opposite 
faith,  at  least  on  two  occasions  saving  lives. 

The  list  of  books  on  Indians  is  enormous,  the  Bureau  of 
Ethnology  alone  having  produced  a  great  many,  including 
the  series  of  thirty-two  invaluable  Annual  Reports  inaugurated 
by  J.  W.  Powell,  as  well  as  more  than  fifty-eight  equally  impor 
tant  Bulletins.  George  Bird  Grinnell's  Indians  of  Today 
(1900)  and  The  North  Americans  of  Yesterday  (1901)  by  Fred 
erick  S.  Dellenbaugh  are  two  volumes  which  present  a  wide 
general  survey. 

A  famous  man  associated  with  Indians  throughout  his 
life  was  Kit  Carson,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  and  upright 
characters  of  the  Far  West.  Dewitt  C.  Peters  persuaded 
Carson  to  dictate  to  him  the  story  of  his  life.  The  last  and 
complete  edition  is  Kit  Carson's  Life  and  Adventures  (1873). 
George  D.  Brewerton  in  Harper's  Magazine  (1853)  wrote  an 
account  of  "A  Ride  with  Kit  Carson  through  the  Great 
American  Desert  and  the  Rocky  Mountains."  This  ride  was 
made  in  1848  and  was  over  the  Spanish  Trail  eastward  from 
Los  Angeles.  The  springs  are  few  and  far  between  in  South 
ern  Nevada  and  South-Eastern  California,  and  in  studying  this 
route  and  the  literature  pertaining  to  the  region  Walter  C. 
Mendenhall's  Some  Desert  Watering  Places  (U.  S.  Water  Supply 
Paper  224,  1909)  is  most  useful. 

Some  experiences  were  published  long  afterward,  as  in  the 
case  of  William  Lewis  Manly's  Death  Valley  in  '49,  which 
was  never  printed  till  1894.  It  is  deeply  interesting.  The 
author,  arrived  at  Green  River,  decided  with  several  others  to 
shorten  the  journey  by  taking  to  the  river,  and  was  hurled 
through  the  torrential  waters  of  Red  Canyon  and  Lodore. 
Later  he  joined  a  California  caravan  to  suffer  terribly  in  Death 
Valley. 

John  Bidwell,  an  "earliest"  pioneer,  has  contributed  to 
The  Century  Magazine,  vol.  xix,  and  to  Out  West  Magazine, 
vol.  xx,  some  invaluable  reminiscences.  He  was  with  the 
first  emigrant  train  to  California.  It  crossed  in  1841.  In 
1853  Captain  Howard  Stansbury  made  a  report  on  his  Explo- 


The  Pacific  Railway 

ration  and  Survey  of  the  Valley  of  Great  Salt  Lake,  the  valley 
where  the  Mormons  already  were  proving  by  irrigation  the 
accuracy  of  Fremont's  statement  as  to  its  fertility. 

Congress  took  up  with  energy  the  matter  of  a  railway  to  the 
Pacific,  and  several  exploration  routes  were  planned.  Fremont 
was  to  survey  one,  but  the  leadership  was  given  instead  to 
Captain  Gunnison,  who  proceeded  by  the  " Central  Route" 
over  the  Sangre  de  Cristo  Pass.  Gunnison  was  killed  by 
Indians  at  Sevier  Lake.  He  had  been  stationed  at  Salt  Lake 
when  assisting  Stansbury,  and  while  there  made  a  study  of 
Mormonism,  The  Mormons,  or  the  Latter  Day  Saints  in  the 
Valley  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake  (1852).  Mrs.  Gunnison  believed 
that  the  Mormons  had  instigated  the  murder  of  her  husband, 
and  Judge  Drummond,  who  tried  the  case,  was  of  this  opin 
ion  also,  and  so  stated  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Gunnison  printed 
in  the  edition  of  1890.  He  believed  that  the  murder  was  car 
ried  out  by  Bill  Hickman  and  eight  others.  One  Mormon  was 
among  those  slain. 

A  series  of  large  quarto  volumes  (thirteen  in  number,  as  the 
last  or  twelfth  volume  was  issued  in  two  parts)  was  published 
on  railway  surveys  by  the  government :  Reports  of  Explorations 
and  Surveys  to  Ascertain  the  most  Practicable  and  Economical 
Route  for  a  Railroad  from  the  Mississippi  River  to  the  Pacific 
Ocean  (1855  to  1859).  The  explorers  wrote  with  grace  and 
facility,  as  a  rule,  and  these  reports  form  an  indispensable 
library  of  information  on  the  Far  West  of  the  fifties. 

While  these  surveys  were  going  on,  an  epoch-making  link 
in  the  chain  that  was  forging  between  Europe  and  Cathay  was 
placed  by  Americans  cruising  in  Asiatic  waters:  Commodore 
Perry  visited  Japan  and  negotiated  the  first  treaty  between 
a  Western  people  and  the  Japanese.  The  record  of  this  achieve 
ment  is  given  in  a  Narrative  of  the  Expedition  of  an  American 
Squadron  to  the  China  Seas  and  Japan  Performed  in  the  Years 
1852,  1853,  and  1854.  Compiled  from  the  Original  Notes  and 
Journals  of  Commodore  Perry  and  his  Officers  at  his  Request  and 
under  his  Supervision  by  Francis  L.  Hawkes  (1856). 

A  transcontinental  railway  became  more  and  more  a  neces 
sity  from  numerous  points  of  view,  not  the  least  of  which  was 
the  interchange  of  products  across  the  Pacific.  Preliminary 
wagon  roads  were  surveyed,  and  for  this  purpose  Lieutenant 


152      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

E.  F.  Beale  in  returning  to  California  struck  across  a  little 
ahead  of  Gunnison  on  the  same  route.  With  him  was  Gwin 
Harris  Heap,  who  wrote  the  narrative  of  the  journey :  Central 
Route  to  the  Pacific  from  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi  to  Cali 
fornia  (1854),  an  attractive  and  interesting  story. 

Following  almost  the  same  route,  as  far  as  Gunnison 's 
crossing  of  Green  River,  came  later  in  the  same  year  the 
indefatigable  Fremont  on  his  fifth  expedition.  At  Gunnison 
Crossing  he  swung  to  the  south  through  the  "High  Plateau" 
country,  a  southern  extension  of  the  Wasatch  uplift,  and  after 
much  suffering  in  the  midwinter  of  1853-54  the  starving  party 
dragged  into  the  Mormon  settlement  of  Parowan  with  the  loss 
of  one  man.  Every  family  in  the  town  immediately  took  in 
some  of  the  men  and  gave  them  the  kindest  care.  When 
able,  Fremont  proceeded  westward  till  he  met  the  high  Sierras'. 
icy  wall,  where  he  deflected  south  to  the  first  available  pass. 
To  the  end  of  his  life  he  never  forgot  the  generous  behavior  of 
the  Mormons. 

At  this  time  Mrs.  Fremont  reports  in  her  Far  West  Sketches 
(i  890)  a  most  remarkable  vision  she  had  of  her  husband's  plight, 
which  came  to  her  in  the  night  at  Washington.  Mrs.  Fremont 
wrote  other  interesting  books,  The  Story  of  the  Guard  (1863), 
A  Year  of  American  Travel  (1878),  Souvenirs  of  my  Time  (1887), 
and  the  ' '  Origin  of  the  Fremont  Explorations ' '  in  The  Century 
Magazine  (1890).  The  Recollections  (1912)  of  her  daughter, 
Elizabeth  Ben  ton  Fremont,  belong  to  the  story  of  Fremont's 
career. 

Fremont  published  no  account,  and  no  data,  of 'the  fifth  and 
last  expedition  excepting  a  letter  to  The  National  Intelligencer 
(1854),  reprinted  in  Bigelow's  Life.  The  narrative  was  to 
appear  in  the  second  volume  of  his  Memoirs,  but  this  was  not 
published.  His  exact  route  therefore  cannot  be  located.  The 
main  reliance  for  the  narrative  is  Incidents  of  Travel  and  Adven 
ture  in  the  Far  West  with  Fremont's  Last  Expedition  (1857),  by 
S.  N.  Carvalho,  artist  to  the  expedition. 

One  of  the  phenomenally  reckless,  daredevil  frontiersmen 
was  James  P.  Beckwourth,  a  man  of  mixed  blood,  who  dictated 
a  marvellous  story  of  his  escapades  to  T.  D.  Bonner.  This  was 
published  in  1856  as  The  Life  and  Adventures  of  James  P. 
Beckwourth.  Somewhat  highly  coloured,  no  doubt,  by  Beck- 


Scouts  and  Hunters  153 

wourth's  fancy,  it  still  remains  a  valuable  record  of  the  time. 
Another  book  in  this  class  is  The  Adventures  of  James  Capen 
Adams  of  California,  edited  by  Theodore  H.  Hittell  (1860  and 
1911);  and  still  another  is  William  F.  Drannan's  Thirty-One 
Years  on  the  Plains  and  Mountains,  or  The  Last  Voice  from  the 
Plains  (1900),  wherein  he  describes  his  intimacy  with  Kit 
Carson  and  other  frontiersmen,  all  apparently  from  memory, 
as  was  the  case  with  the  life  records  of  most  of  the  rougher 
class  of  hunters.  Drannan  published  another  book,  Captain 
W.  F.  Drannan,  Chief  of  Scouts,  etc.  Joe  Meek  was  a  brilliant 
example  of  the  early  trapper  and  had  a  varied  experience  which 
Mrs.  Frances  Fuller  Victor  records  in  her  fine  work  The  River  of 
the  West  (1870). 

An  extremely  scarce  volume  is  Reid's  Tramp:  or  a  Journal 
of  the  Incidents  of  Ten  Months'  Travel  Through  Texas,  New  Mex 
ico,  Arizona,  etc.  This  volume  by  John  C.  Reid  was  published 
in  1858  at  Selma,  Alabama.  The  United  States,  after  the 
Mexican  War,  had  bought  from  Mexico  a  strip  south  of  the 
Gila  River  known  as  the  "Gadsden  Purchase,"  and  to  this 
many  pioneers  flocked  expecting  a  new  Eden,  Eldorado,  Ely- 
sian  Fields,  or  what  not.  Reid  remarks:  ''We  may  review  the 
history  of  the  fall,  death,  and  interment  of  these  hopes  in  a  far- 
off  country  of  irremediable  disappointment."  We  know  of 
the  existence  of  but  four  copies  of  Reid's  book. 

After  the  Gadsden  Purchase  the  matter  of  the  Mexican 
boundary  was  ready  for  determination.  The  work  was  under 
the  direction  of  Major  W.  H.  Emory,  who  made  an  excellent 
Report  on  the  United  States  and  Mexican  Boundary  Survey  (1857) 
in  two  fine  volumes,  the  first  two  chapters  of  volume  I  con 
taining  a  very  interesting  personal  account.  One  of  the  bound 
ary  commissioners,  John  Russell  Bartlett,  published  his  own 
account  in  two  volumes  of  Personal  Narrative  of  Explorations 
and  Incidents  in  Texas,  New  Mexico,  California,  Sonora,  and 
Chihuahua  During  the  Years  1850,  '57,  '52,  and  1853  (1854), 
a  valuable  addition  to  the  literature  of  the  South-west. 

On  the  north  the  boundary  was  also  surveyed,  and  Archi 
bald  Campbell  and  W.  J.  Twining  wrote  Reports  upon  the  Sur 
vey  of  the  Boundary  between  the  Territory  of  the  United  States 
and  the  Possessions  of  Great  Britain  from  the  Lake  of  the  Woods 
to  the  Summit  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  (1878).  Previously  the 


154     Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

boundary  along  the  49th  parallel  had  been  surveyed  to  the  Gulf 
of  Georgia  in  settling  the  Oregon  question. 

A  volume  published  for  the  author,  Philip  Tome,  in  Buffalo 
in  1854,  now  very  rare,  is  Pioneer  Life,  or  Thirty  Years  a  Hunter. 
Being  Scenes  and  Adventures  in  the  Life  of  Philip  Tome,  Fifteen 
Years  Interpreter  for  Cornplanter  and  George  Blacksnake,  Chiefs 
on  the  Alleghany  River.  Cornplanter,  a  half-breed  Seneca,  was 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the  Iroquois  leaders. 

In  the  early  fifties  Joaquin  Miller1  was  taken  to  California 
overland  by  his  parents,  and  the  impressions  he  received 
coloured  his  entire  life.  His  poem,  The  Ship  in  the  Desert 
(1875),  is  a  string  of  "these  scenes  and  descriptions  of  a  mighty 
land  of  mystery,  and  wild  and  savage  grandeur. " 

What  scenes  they  passed,  what  camps  at  morn, 

What  weary  columns  kept  the  road; 

What  herds  of  troubled  cattle  low'd, 

And  trumpeted  like  lifted  horn; 

And  everywhere,  or  road  or  rest, 

All  things  were  pointing  to  the  West; 

A  weary,  long  and  lonesome  track, 

And  all  led  on,  but  one  looked  back. 

Joaquin  Miller  also  wrote  the  prose  volume  Life  Among  the 
Modocs  (1874). 

A  period  was  now  beginning  when  the  literature  of  the  Far 
West  was  not  to  be  confined  to  the  tales  of  trappers  and  explor 
ers.  About  1860  a  young  printer  obtained  employment  in  the 
composing-room  of  The  Golden  Era  in  San  Francisco,  and  he 
was  a  contributor  to  that  paper  as  well.  He  was  invited  to  the 
home  of  the  Fremonts  (who  were  then  living  on  their  Black 
Point  estate  near  the  Golden  Gate)  because  of  the  talent,  the 
genius,  they  discovered  in  his  manuscripts.  From  that  mo 
ment  the  career  of  Bret  Harte2  flowed  on  successfully  to  the  end. 
About  the  same  time  there  appeared  on  this  remote  and 
primitive  literary  stage  another  genius  who  was  dubbed  the 
"Wild  Humorist  of  the  Pacific  Slope."  He  tried  mining  with 
no  success  and  then  turned  to  his  pen.  The  Jumping  Frog 
(1867)  carried  the  name  of  the  former  Mississippi  pilot  to  the 
outer  world,  and  "Mark  Twain"  became  a  star  among  the 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  x.  2  Ibid.,  Chap.  vi. 


The  Orient  155 

literary  lights  of  the  United  States.1  Further  mention  here  of 
either  of  these  brilliant  members  of  the  American  literary  fra 
ternity  is  unnecessary  except  perhaps  to  note  Mark  Twain's  Life 
on  the  Mississippi  (1883)  and  his  Letter  to  the  California  Pioneers 
(1911),  in  the  second  of  which  he  describes  his  life  as  a  miner. 
An  early  literary  explorer  to  the  Pacific  Coast  was  Theodore 
Winthrop,2  who  wrote  The  Canoe  and  Saddle,  Adventures  Among 
the  Northwestern  Rivers  and  Forests;  and  Isthmiana  (1862). 

One  of  our  inveterate  travellers  of  the  purely  literary  type 
was  Bayard  Taylor.3  Among  the  first  he  went  to  California 
and  published  Eldorado,  or  Adventures  in  the  Path  of  Empire 
(1850).  Taylor  was  a  voluminous  writer  and  his  works 
describe  many  parts  of  the  globe.  China  was  one  country  that 
found  him  an  early  visitor,  from  which  journey  came  A  Visit 
to  India,  China,  and  Japan  in  1853  (1855). 

The  interesting  experiences  and  reminiscences  of  one  of  the 
most  prominent  Americans  in  China  during  many  decades, 
Dr.  William  A.  P.  Martin,  first  president  of  the  Imperial 
University,  are  told  in  Dr.  Martin's  book,  A  Cycle  of  Cathay 
(1897),  an  indispensable  work  in  this  field.  William  Elliot 
Griffis  visited  the  Orient  too,  and  gave  us  The  Mikado's  Empire 
(1876)  and  Corea,  The  Hermit  Nation  (1882).  The  road  to  the 
East  from  the  West,  which  Benton  so  dramatically  pointed  out, 
was  being  followed  with  enthusiasm.  Lafcadio  Hearn  made 
Japan  his  own.  His  Glimpses  of  Unfamiliar  Japan  (1894), 
Leaves  from  the  Diary  of  an  Impressionist  (1911),  Out  of  the  East 
(1895),  In  Ghostly  Japan  (1899),  and  others  are  too  well  known 
to  require  comment.  A  contribution  of  much  interest  to  this 
literature  is  Eliza  Ruhamah  Scidmore's  Jinrikisha  Days  in 
Japan  (1891).  She  declares  that  "Japan  six  times  revisited  is 
as  full  of  charm  and  novelty  as  when  I  first  went  ashore  from 
the  wreck  of  the  Tokio" 

A  missionary  who  wrote  Adventures  in  Patagonia  (1880) 
wrote  also  Life  in  Hawaii  (1882),  both  of  them  "foundation" 
books.  He  became  identified  with  everything  Hawaiian,  and 
wrote  many  letters  from  there  to  The  American  Journal  of 
Science  and  to  The  Missionary  Herald.  This  indefatigable 
worker  in  the  missionary  realm  was  the  Rev.  Titus  Coan,  whose 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vm.  *  Ibid.,  Chap.  xi. 

*Ibid.,  Chap.  x. 


156      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

son,  Dr.  Titus  Munson  Coan,  has  written  a  brochure  on  The 
Climate  of  Hawaii  (1901)  and  on  The  Natives  of  Hawaii:  A 
Study  in  Polynesian  Charm  (1901). 

The  South  Seas  enthrall  the  visitor  with  this  "Polynesian 
charm";  a  drifting  away  from  material  things  on  "tropic 
spray  'which  knows  not  if  it  be  sea  or  sun'";  a  plunge  into  a 
conservatory  of  blossoms  producing  a  sort  of  narcosis — at  least 
such  was  the  effect  in  former  days,  and  Charles  Warren 
Stoddard  caught  and  presented  this  earlier  delicioso  in  his 
classic  South  Sea  Idyls  (1873),  "the  lightest,  sweetest,  wildest 
things  that  ever  were  written  about  the  life  of  the  summer 
ocean,"  declares  W.  D.  Howells  in  the  introduction  which  he 
wrote.  "No  one  need  ever  write  of  the  South  Seas  again." 
Full  of  whales  were  these  South  Seas,  too,  as  well  as  of  the 
fragrance  of  tropic  fruits,  and  the  life  of  the  whaler  in  pursuit 
of  them  there,  as  well  as  in  the  northern  waters,  has  found 
numerous  recorders.  But  who  has  painted  it  as  delightfully, 
as  masterfully,  as  Herman  Melville1  in  Moby  Dick?  And 
who  can  forget,  once  lost  in  its  wonderful  glow,  that  other 
story  of  Melville's,  the  story  of  life  among  cannibals,  told 
in  Typee  ?  And  there  is  Omoo,  hardly  less  absorbing,  telling  of 
life  in  Tahiti.  These  books  of  his  belong  to  our  American 
classics.  He  wrote  also  White  Jacket,  of  life  on  a  man-of-war, 
Redburn,  and  Mardi  and  a  Voyage  Thither. 

"Wherever  ship  has  sailed,  there  have  I  been,"  said  Colum 
bus,  and  the  men — and  women — of  America  were  scarcely  be 
hind  him  in  travel  and  exploration.  They  tested  out  the  far 
far  seas,  the  solitudes  of  continents,  the  innermost  secrets  of  the 
rivers.  But  there  was  one  river,  wild,  rock-bound,  and  recal 
citrant,  the  Colorado,  which,  like  a  raging  dragon,  refused  to 
come  to  terms  and  was  so  fierce  withal  that  trapper  and 
pioneer  shunned  its  canyon  tentacles  and  passed  by.  Finally 
the  government  sent  Lieutenant  J.  C.  Ives  to  attack  it  at  its 
mouth,  which  is  defended  by  a  monstrous  tidal  wave,  and  to 
ascend  in  his  little  iron  steamer,  The  Explorer.  Ives  reached 
the  foot  of  Black  Canyon,  while  Captain  Johnson  with  another 
steamer  succeeded  in  reaching  a  somewhat  higher  point. 
Johnson's  journal  has  not  been  published,  but  Ives  wrote  an 
interesting  Report  upon  the  Colorado  River  of  the  West  Explored 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  VH. 


The  Colorado  River  15? 

in  1857  and  1858,  published  in  1861,  the  year  the  memorable 
shot  was  fired  at  Port  Sumter.  The  Colorado  was  forgotten. 

So  far  the  explorer  had  merely  examined  the  dragon's  teeth, 
but  in  1867  Major  J.  W.  Powell,  a  veteran  of  the  Federal  army, 
investigating  the  geology  of  the  Territory  of  Colorado,  con 
ceived  the  idea  of  exploring  the  mysterious  and  fateful  can 
yons  by  descending  through  their  entire  length  of  a  thousand 
miles  in  small  boats. 

The  same  year  an  uneducated  man,  James  White,  was 
rescued  near  Callville  from  a  raft  on  which  he  had  come  down 
the  river  some  distance.  His  condition  was  pitiful.  He  was 
interviewed  by  Dr.  Parry,  who  happened  to  be  there  with  a 
railway  survey  party,  and  Parry  told  White  that  he  must  have 
come  through  the  "Big"  canyon.  White  therefore  said  he 
had,  when  assured  that  he  had,  although  he  did  not  know  the 
topography  of  the  canyons — neither  did  Dr.  Parry,  nor  any  one 
else.  The  White  story  was  first  told  in  General  Palmer's 
Report  of  Surveys  Across  the  Continent  in  1867-68  on  the  jjth 
and  3 2nd  Parallels,  etc.  (1869).  It  was  repeated  in  William  A. 
Bell's  New  Tracks  in  North  America  (1869)  and  quite  recently 
has  been  republished  with  notes  and  comments  by  Thomas  F. 
Dawson  in  The  Grand  Canyon,  Doc.  42,  Senate,  6$th  Cong.,ist 
Sess.  (1917). 

Mr.  Dawson,  like  others  who  have  not  run  the  huge  and 
numerous  rapids  of  the  Grand  Canyon,  believes  that  White 
went  through  on  his  frail  little  raft,  but  all  who  know  the 
Canyon  well  are  certain  that  White  did  not  make  the  passage 
and  that  the  story  that  he  did  rests  entirely  on  what  Dr.  Parry 
thought.  It  is  only  necessary  to  add  that  White  found  but  one 
big  rapid  in  his  course,  whereas  there  are  dozens  in  the  distance 
it  is  claimed  that  he  travelled.  The  river  falls  1850  feet  in  the 
Grand  Canyon,  480  in  Marble  Canyon,  and  690  between  this 
and  the  junction  of  the  Green  and  Grand,  or  a  total  of  3020 
feet  in  the  distance  White  is  said  to  have  gone. 

In  the  spring  of  1869  Major  Powell  started  from  the  Union 
Pacific  Railway  in  Wyoming  and  descended,  in  partly  decked 
rowboats,  through  the  thousand  miles  of  canyons  so  closely 
connected  that  they  are  well-nigh  one,  with  a  total  descent  of 
5375  ^eet  to  the  mouth  of  the  Virgin.  In  1871-72  he  made  a 
second  descent  to  complete  the  exploration  and  to  obtain  the 


158      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

required  topographical  and  geological  data,  prevented  by  dis 
aster  and  lack  of  trained  men  on  the  first  voyage.  The  ac 
count  of  the  first  voyage  is  given  in  Powell's  Exploration  of  the 
Colorado  River  of  the  West  (1875),  a  report  to  the  government. 
He  did  not  include  a  narrative  of  the  second  descent,  which  is 
related  in  A  Canyon  Voyage  (1908)  by  Frederick  S.  Dellenbaugh, 
a  member  of  the  party.  The  same  author's  The  Romance  of  the 
Colorado  River  (1902)  tells  the  history  of  this  unique  river  from 
the  Spanish  discovery  in  1540,  and  gives  a  table  of  altitudes 
along  the  river.  A  recent  experience  (1911)  in  navigating  the 
river  which  has  been  chronicled  by  Ellsworth  Kolb  in  Through 
the  Grand  Canyon  from  Wyoming  to  Mexico  (1914)  furnishes 
valuable  data. 

In  1889  Frank  M.  Brown  attempted  a  railway  survey 
through  the  canyons  from  Gunnison  Crossing  down.  He  was 
drowned  in  Marble  Canyon,  as  were  two  of  his  men.  His  en 
gineer,  Robert  B.  Stanton,  returned  to  the  task  the  same  year 
with  better  boats  and  successfully  completed  the  descent.  He 
relates  what  befell  him  and  his  men  in  an  article  in  Scribner's 
Magazine  for  November,  1890,  "Through  the  Grand  Canyon 
of  the  Colorado,"  and  there  are  other  magazine  articles  on  the 
subject. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  first  proper  maps  of  the 
United  States  were  made  of  Far  Western  territory,  and  this  was 
due  to  the  initiative  of  several  energetic  explorers.  Clarence 
King  inaugurated  a  geological  survey  with  map  work  in  con 
junction  with  it,  the  results  appearing  in  seven  volumes,  Report 
of  the  Geological  Exploration  of  the  Fortieth  Parallel  1870-80. 
King  wrote  a  charming  volume,  too,  Mountaineering  in  the  Sierra 
Nevada  (1871),  and  later  that  literary  gem  in  The  Century 
Magazine  (1886),  "The  Helmet  of  Mambrino,"  the  "helmet" 
and  the  original  manuscript  being  preserved  in  the  library  of 
the  Century  Association. 

Powell's  Colorado  River  Exploring  Expedition  developed 
into  the  Rocky  Mountain  Survey,  and  Dr.  F.  V.  Hay  den 
conducted  a  series  of  surveys  in  Colorado,  etc.,  called  the 
Geographical  and  Geological  Survey  of  the  Territories.  At  the 
same  time  the  army  put  into  the  Western  field  Lieut.  George 
M.  Wheeler,  who  conducted  Geographical  Surveys  West  of  the 
looth  Meridian.  Wheeler,  in  1871,  ascended  the  Colorado 


Pueblo  and  Plains  Indians  159 

River  as  far  as  Diamond  Creek.  Seven  volumes  were  pro 
duced  by  the  Wheeler  Survey,  eleven  by  the  Hayden,  and  a 
considerable  number  by  the  Powell  Survey.  At  the  same  time 
they  turned  out  topographic  maps  of  excellent  character,  all 
things  considered — in  most  cases  better  than  any  then  existing 
of  the  Eastern  part  of  the  country. 

In  connection  with  the  Powell  Survey  Captain  C.  E.  But 
ton  studied  the  geology  of  certain  districts  and  wrote  sev 
eral  books  that  are  almost  unique  in  their  combination  of 
literary  charm  with  scientific  accuracy:  Physical  Geology  of 
the  Grand  Canyon  District  (1880-81),  Tertiary  History  of  the 
Grand  Canyon  (1882),  and  The  High  Plateaus  of  Utah  (1880). 

Powell  established  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  and  from  this 
issued  the  large  number  of  volumes  before  referred  to,  a  mine 
of  information  on  the  North  American  Indian.  Many  workers 
were  in  the  field.  One  of  the  most  picturesque  of  these  labours 
was  Frank  H.  Cushing's  initiation  in  to  theZufii  tribe  described  in 
his  Adventures  in  Zuni  ( 1 883) .  He  wrote,  too,  Zuni  Folk  Tales 
(1901) ;  and,  in  the  Bureau  reports,  other  articles  on  the  Zuni.1  A 
remarkable  ceremonial  of  another  Puebloan  group  was  written 
down  by  Captain  John  G.  Bourke  in  The  Snake  Dance  of  the 
Moquis  [Hopi]  of  Arizona  (1884).  The  Puebloans  for  many 
centuries  have  built  villages  of  adobe  and  stone  in  the  South 
west  in  canyons,  in  valleys,  and  on  mesas.  One  of  these  cliff- 
bound  plateaus,  the  Mesa  Encantada,  was  the  source  of  some 
controversy  as  to  whether  or  not  its  summit  was  once  occupied. 
Its  walls  were  scaled  and  some  evidences  of  the  former  presence 
of  natives  were  found.  Professor  William  Libbey  and  F.  W. 
Hodge  both  have  written  on  the  subject. 

While  the  pioneers  were  pouring  into  the  West,  exterminat 
ing  the  buffalo  for  hide-and-tallow  profits,  described  by  W.  T. 
Hornaday  in  The  Extermination  of  the  American  Bison  (1889), 
and  dispossessing  the  Plains  Indians  generally,  the  latter  became 
restless  and  unruly.  Under  the  spell  of  their  crafty ' '  medicine ' ' 
priest,  Sitting  Bull,  the  Sioux  were  greatly  disturbed.  The 
army  was  ordered  to  compel  their  obedience  and  in  1876  made 
a  determined  move  expected  to  crush  the  Indians.  General 
Crook  was  defeated  in  one  of  the  first  encounters;  and  a  few 
days  later  General  Custer  was  annihilated  with  his  immediate 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap,  xxxui. 


1 60      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

command.  The  Sioux  were  superior  in  numbers  and  in  arms. 
The  courage  of  Custer  was  of  no  avail. 

Custer  wrote  My  Life  on  the  Plains  (1874)  and  a  number 
of  articles  for  The  Galaxy.  General  W.  B.  Hazen,  who  had  a 
quarrel  with  Custer,  privately  published  Some  Corrections  of 
11  My  Life  on  the  Plains"  (1875).  Frederick  Whittaker  wrote 
a  Complete  Life  of  General  George  A.  Custer  (1876),  full  of  de 
tails,  and  the  whole  written  in  a  painstaking  way.  A  large 
amount  of  information  given  in  an  exceedingly  pleasant  manner 
is  found  in  the  books  of  the  General's  widow,  Elizabeth  Bacon 
Custer :  Boots  and  Saddles  t  or  Life  in  Dakota  with  General  Custer 
(1885) ;  Tenting  on  the  Plains,  or  General  Custer  in  Kansas  and 
Texas  (1887);  Following  the  Guidon  (1890).  Mrs.  Custer  also 
wrote  the  introduction  for  George  Armstrong  Custer  (1916)  by 
Frederick  S.  Dellenbaugh.  There  was  comparatively  little 
trouble  with  the  Sioux  Indians  after  the  massacre  of  Custer, 
for  even  they  seemed  to  be  impressed  by  its  horror;  just  as  the 
Modocs  were  when  they  destroyed  the  attacking  troops — 
afterwards  Scar-faced  Charley  said  his  "  heart  was  sick  of  seeing 
so  many  men  killed." 

One  of  the  primary  causes  of  Indian  difficulties  was  the 
rapid  growth  of  the  cattle  and  sheep  industry  on  the  Plains. 
The  remarkably  nutritive  grasses  which  had  fattened  buffalo 
by  the  tens  of  thousands  now  fattened  cattle  and  sheep  in  like 
numbers.  As  cattle  and  sheep  will  not  feed  on  the  same  range, 
or  rather  cattle  will  not  on  a  sheep  range,  there  were  clashes 
that  were  well-nigh  battles  between  the  sheep  and  the  cattle 
men.  Large  tracts  were  bought  or  claimed,  and  fenced  in — 
another  cause  of  trouble.  And  still  another  was  the  character 
of  the  cattle  herders.  There  were  suddenly  many  of  them  in 
the  later  seventies.  They  lived  in  camps  and  for  some  reason 
they  dropped  to  a  lower  state  of  degradation  than  any  class 
of  men,  red  or  white,  that  the  Far  West  had  seen.  Beside 
a  full-fledged  "cowboy"  of  the  earlier  period  of  their  brief 
reign  the  Indian  pales  to  a  mere  recalcitrant  Quaker.  With 
the  further  development  of  the  country  the  cowboy  became 
more  civilized  and  later  on  he  redeemed  himself  by  writing 
poetry  and  books.  The  reason  for  this  desirable  transforma 
tion  from  debauchery  to  inspiration  may  be  read  in  the 
lines : 


Cowboy  Poets  161 

When  the  last  free  trail  is  a  prim  fenced  land, 
And  our  graves  grow  weeds  through  forgetful  Mays. 

The  country  was  becoming  agricultural;  the  trails  were  being 
fenced  in ;  the  herds  growing  smaller  for  lack  of  vast,  unpaid- 
f or,  free  range ;  they  were  of  necessity  differently  handled ;  and 
the  cowboy's  pistol  was  confronted  by  the  sheriff's.  In  short, 
the  wild  cowboy  was  a  wild  cowboy  no  more.  The  quotation 
is  from  the  admirable  volume  of  poems  of  the  West  by  Charles 
Badger  Clark,  Jr.,  Sun  and  Saddle  Leather  (1915),  which  con 
tains  "The  Glory  Trail"  (known  among  the  camps  as  "High 
Chin  Bob")  and  another  equally  rhythmical,  "The  Christmas 
Trail,"  one  stanza  of  which  is: 

The  coyote's  Winter  howl  cuts  the  dusk  behind  the  hill, 

But  the  ranch's  shinin'  window  I  kin  see: 

And  though  I  don't  deserve  it,  and  I  reckon  never  will, 

There'll  be  room  beside  the  fire  kep'  for  me. 

Skimp  my  plate  'cause  I'm  late.     Let  me  hit  the  old  kid  gait, 

For  to-night  I'm  stumblin'  tired  of  the  new, 

And  I'm  ridin'  up  the  Christmas  trail  to  you, 

Old  Folks, 
I'm  a-ridin'  up  the  Christmas  trail  to  you. 

The  man  who  wrote  this,  we  may  be  sure,  never  "shot  up"  a 
Western  saloon.  Another  volume  of  this  delightful  verse  re 
flecting  the  freedom  of  the  Western  skies  is  Out  Where  the  West 
Begins,  by  Arthur  Chapman,  and  two  more  are,  Riders  of  the 
Stars  and  Songs  of  the  Outlands,  both  in  ink  of  mountain  hue, 
from  the  pen  of  Herbert  Knibbs.  These  are  the  things  we 
expect  from  men  who  have  ridden  the  sagebrush  plain,  scamp 
ered  up  the  painted  cliffs  with  a  horizon  waving  in  the  blue,  or 
slept  in  the  winter  white  under  the  whispering  pines. 

Besides  this  native  poetry  we  have  some  excellent  prose 
work  in  this  field;  Ten  Years  a  Cowboy  (1908)  by  C.  C.  Post; 
The  Log  of  a  Cowboy  (1903)  by  Andy  Adams,  as  well  as  The 
Outlet  by  the  same  author,  the  latter  relating  to  the  great  cattle 
drives  formerly  undertaken  from  Texas  to  the  North-west. 
Charles  M.  Russell,  the  "Cowboy  Artist,"  who  has  preserved 
with  his  brush  some  of  the  thrilling  pictures  of  this  ephemeral 
and  showy  savagery,  has  expressed  himself  in  a  literary  manner 


VOL.  Ill — II 


1 62      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846  1900 

in  Studies  of  Western  Life  ( 1 890) .  And  it  is  necessary  to  men 
tion  in  this  connection  the  drawings  of  Frederick  Remington,  as 
well  as  Owen  Wister's  later  classic  of  cowboy  life,  The  Virginian 

(1905)- 

In  the  golden  days  of  '49  there  was  a  road  to  the  Californian 
Eldorado  by  way  of  the  Isthmus  of  Panama.  There  were  no 
Indians  that  way  but  there  was  the  Chagres  River,  until  a 
railway  was  built.  There  is  a  particular  literature  of  the  Isth 
mus.  A  Story  of  Life  on  the  Isthmus  (1853)  was  written  by 
Joseph  Warren  Fabens;  and  an  even  earlier  one  The  Isthmus 
of  Panama  and  What  I  Saw  There  (1839)  is  by  Chauncey  D. 
Griswold.  Then  there  is  Five  Years  at  Panama  (1889)  by 
Wolf  red  Nelson,  and  numerous  others  between  these  dates, 
including  an  exceedingly  scarce  volume,  The  Panama  Mas 
sacre  (1857),  which  presents  the  evidence  in  the  case  of  the 
massacre  of  Americans  in  1856.  A  few  years  after  this  event 
Tracy  Robinson  appeared  on  the  Isthmus  and  for  forty-six 
years  he  made  it  his  home.  This  veteran  published  his  Panama , 
a  Personal  Record  of  Forty -six  Years,  1861—1907  only  a  short  time 
before  his  death. 

Frederick  Law  Olmsted  was  specially  interested  in  the  South 
and  in  1856  he  wrote  A  Journey  in  the  Seaboard  Slave  States 
with  Remarks  on  Their  Economy;  in  1857,  A  Journey  through 
Texas;  in  1861,  The  Cotton  Kingdom  (made  up  from  the  two 
preceding  books) ;  and  in  1863,  A  Journey  in  the  Back  Country. 
A  very  scarce  item  is  a  Southerner's  impressions  of  the  North 
in  Sketches  on  a  Tour  Through  the  Northern  and  Eastern  States, 
the  Canadas,  and  Nova  Scotia  (1840)  by  J.  C.  Meyers,  one 
traveller  who  was  not  impelled  towards  the  Golden  Gate. 
Burroughs  in  the  Catskills  and  Thoreau1  in  his  favourite 
haunts  and  on  his  Yankee  Trip  in  Canada  (1866)  hardly  need 
mention,  but  there  were  some  other  outdoor  men  along  the 
eastern  part  of  the  continent.  Lucius  L.  Hubbard  in  1884 
wrote  Woods  and  Lakes  of  Maine,  a  Trip  from  Moosehead  Lake 
to  New  Brunswick  in  a  Birch  Canoe;  Charles  A.  J.  Farrar  in 
1886,  Down  in  the  West  Branch,  or  Camps  and  Tramps  around 
Katahdin;  and  another,  From  Lake  to  Lake,  or  A  Trip  across  the 
Country,  A  Narrative  of  the  Wilds  of  Maine. 

Although  J.  T.  Headley  wrote  Letters  from  the  Backwoods 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  X. 


Americans  in  Africa  163 

and  the  Adirondack  in  1850,  and  others  gave  accounts  of  the 
splendid  "wilderness"  of  Northern  New  York,  it  remained  for 
W.  H.  H.  Murray,  a  clergyman,  to  stir  up  sportsmen  and 
travellers  on  this  topic  with  his  enthusiastic  book  on  the  region, 
Adventures  in  the  Wilderness,  or  Camp  Life  in  the  Adirondacks 
( 1 869) ,  which  earned  for  him  the  title  of ' '  Adirondack ' '  Murray. 

American  travellers  and  explorers  extended  their  researches 
to  the  veritable  ends  of  the  earth,  and  their  literary  product  was 
enormous.  Africa  came  in  for  examination,  too.  Paul  B. 
DuChaillu  explored  in  West  Africa  in  1855—59  and  reported  the 
surprising  gorilla;  and  in  1863-65  he  reported  pygmies,  both 
bringing  the  reproach  of  prevarication  against  him.  He  was 
not  long  in  being  vindicated.  He  published  Explorations  and 
Adventures  in  Equatorial  Africa  (1861),  A  Journey  to  Ashango 
Land  (1867),  The  Country  of  the  Dwarfs  (1872),  and  Stories  of 
the  Gorilla  Country  (1868).  Then  he  turned  his  attention  to 
the  north  and  gave  us  The  Land  of  the  Midnight  Sun  (1881) ,  The 
Viking  Age  (1889),  The  Land  of  the  Long  Night  (1899). 

An  American  newspaper  correspondent  was  sent  to  seek  the 
lost  Livingstone,  andHenry  M.  Stanley  tells  his  remarkable  story 
in  How  I  Found  Livingstone  (1872).  He  became  the  foremost 
African  explorer,  and  wrote  Coomassie  and  Magdala  (1874), 
Through  the  Dark  Continent  (1878),  In  Darkest  Africa  (1890), 
The  Congoandthe  Founding  of  its  FreeState  (1885).  This  "free" 
state  turned  out  to  be  anything  but  free  and  became  the  centre 
of  a  storm  of  controversy.  The  Story  of  the  Congo  Free  State 
(1905)  by  H.  W.  Wack  controverts  the  charges,  but  those  who 
know  refuse  to  accept  it. 

Another  part  of  Africa  long  had  received  attention:  Egypt. 
The  list  of  American  travellers  and  explorers  in  that  ancient 
land  is  almost  beyond  recording.  Here  again  Bayard  Taylor 
is  found  with  his  A  Journey  to  Central  Africa  ( 1 854) ,  and  George 
W.  Curtis1  wrote  Nile  Notes  of  a  Howadji  (1851) ;  W.  C.  Prime 
gives  us  Boat  Life  in  Egypt  and  Nubia  (1868) ;  Bishop  Potter, 
The  Gates  of  the  East,  or  a  Winter  in  Egypt  (i  876). 

But  the  most  prominent  American  in  the  Egyptian  region 
was  Charles  Chaille-Long,  who  carried  on  some  extensive  ex 
plorations  along  the  upper  Nile.  His  chief  literary  works  are : 
Central  Africa  .  .  .  an  Account  of  Expeditions  to  Lake  Victoria 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xm. 


164      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

Nyanza,  etc.  (1877),  The  Three  Prophets:  Chinese  Gordon,  Mo 
hammed  Ahmed  (el  Maahdi),  Ar obi-Pasha  (1884),  and  My  Life 
in  Four  Continents  (1912). 

Italy  is  not  behind  Egypt  as  regards  of  American  travel- 
literature.  There  is  W.  D.  Howells1  with  Italian  Journeys  in 
1 867  and  Venetian  Life  of  the  year  before ;  James  Jarvis  Jackson 
with  Italian  Sights  and  Papal  Principalities  Seen  through  Amer 
ican  Spectacles  (1856),  and  Helen  Hunt  Jackson's  Bits  of  Travel 

(1873)- 

Then  there  are  another  score  or  two  on  Spain ;  John  Hay's 
Castilian  Days  ( 1 87 1 ) ;  Washington  Irving 's  many  contributions ; 
EdwardEverett  Hale'sSeven Spanish  Cities  (1899)  J  William H. 
Bishop's  A  House  Hunter  in  Europe  [France,  Italy,  Spain] 
(1893) ;  and  Bayard  Taylor's  The  Land  of  the  Saracens  (1855). 
Raphael  Pumpelly  went  Across  America  and  Asia  and  tells 
about  it  in  the  book  of  that  title  published  in  1870;  W.  W. 
Rockhill  made  many  journeys  in  Oriental  lands.  He  published 
Diary  of  a  Journey  through  Mongolia  and  Tibet  in  1891-1892 
(1894).  "Sunset"  [S.  S.]  Cox  tells  of  the  Diversions  of  a 
Diplomat  in  Turkey  (1887);  Charles  Dudley  Warner2  of  In 
the  Levant  (1895) ;  W,  T.  Hornaday  of  Two  Years  in  the  Jungle 
[India,  Ceylon,  etc.]  (1886);  and  Samuel  M.  Zwemer  of  Arabia 
the  Cradle  of  Islam  (1900).  The  last  named  has  also  written 
on  Arabia,  which  he  has  studied  long  at  first  hand,  other  im 
portant  volumes,  beyond  the  horizon  of  this  chapter. 

Many  Americans  travelled  in  Russia,  too,  and  wrote  vol 
umes  about  that  enigmatical  country :  Nathan  Appleton,  Rus 
sian  Life  and  Society  as  Seen  in  1866-67  and  A  Journey  to 
Russia  with  General  Banks  i86p  (1904) ;  Edna  Dean  Proctor,  A 
Russian  Journey  (1873);  Miss  Isabel  Hapgood,  Russian  Ram 
bles  (1895);  C.  A.  Dana,  Eastern  Journeys  (1898);  Eugene 
Schuyler,  Notes  of  a  Journey  in  Russian  Turkestan,  Etc.  (1876) ; 
and  Poultney  Bigelow,  Paddles  and  Politics  down  the  Danube; 
A  Canoe  Voyage  from  the  Black  Forest  to  the  Black  Sea  (1892). 

Charles  Augustus  Stoddard  was  another  ubiquitous  travel 
ler  whose  works  are  difficult  to  classify  in  one  group.  His 
Across  Russia  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Danube  (1891)  takes  us  into 
rather  out-of-the-way  paths,  and  then  he  strikes  for  Spanish 
Cities  with  Glimpses  of  Gibraltar  and  Tangier  (1892),  only  to 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xi.  a  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xin. 


The  Philippines  165 

jump  to  Beyond  the  Rockies  (1894),  with  A  Spring  Journey  in 
California  (1895)  and  some  Cruising  in  the  Caribbees  the  same 
year. 

Albert  Payson  Terhune  shows  us  Syria  from  the  Saddle  (i  896) 
with  his  customary  virility;  John  Bell  Bout  on  takes  us  Round 
about  to  Moscow  (1887),  where  we  instinctively  think  of  George 
Kennan  and  his  The  Siberian  Exile  System  (1891)  and  follow 
him  into  Tent  Life  in  Siberia  through  two  editions,  1871  and  1910. 
From  there  we  run  back  On  Canada's  Frontier  (1892)  with  Julian 
Ralph,  and  then  Down  Historic  Waterways  (1888)  with  Reuben 
Gold  Thwaites,  who  also  leads  us  On  the  Storied  Ohio  (1897), 
after  which  he  holds  up  the  mirror  to  previous  travellers  in 
thirty- two  volumes  of  Early  Western  Travels  (1904-06).  If  we 
are  interested  in  botany,  there  is  Bradford  Torrey,  who  con 
tributed  to  Reports  on  Western  exploration,  and  wrote  inde 
pendently  A  Florida  Sketch  Book  (1894),  Spring  Notes  from 
Tennessee  (1895),  and  Footing  it  in  Franconia  (1901). 

The  war  with  Spain  landed  the  United  States  in  the  Philip 
pines,  clear  across  the  wide  western  ocean,  thus  at  last  forging 
the  final  link  in  the  chain  stretching  westward  from  Europe 
to  Cathay,  and  proving  ultimately  Senator  Benton's  prophecy 
as  he  pointed  towards  the  sunset  and  said :  "There  lies  the  road 
to  India." 

The  various  islands  of  the  Philippine  group  were  occupied 
by  different  tribes  in  varying  stages  of  progress,  and  it  became 
the  problem  of  the  new  governing  power  to  give  each  protection 
from  the  other  and  an  opportunity  to  develop.  In  carrying  out 
this  broad  policy  not  only  were  schools  established  and  towns 
remodelled,  but  battles  were  fought  with  such  tribes  as  were 
recalcitrant  and  unruly  like  the  wild  Moros. 

The  literature  which  has  grown  out  of  all  this  effort  is  large 
and  of  vast  importance  civically,  ethnologically,  and  politically, 
for  it  is  the  history  of  harmonizing  antagonistic  primitive  groups, 
guiding  them  into  proper  channels  of  progress,  and  fitting  them 
for  eventual  self  government,  a  task  never  before  set  for  itself 
by  any  conqueror;  and  a  task  which  has  led  to  impatience  and 
misunderstanding  not  only  among  the  warring  tribes  but  among 
people  at  home  who  were  ignorant  of  the  situation.  Arthur 
Judson  Brown  describes  The  New  Era  in  the  Philippines  (1903) ; 
James  H.  Blount  asks  (in  The  North  American  Review,  1907) 


166      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

"Philippine  Independence,  When?";  William  H.  Taft  in  The 
Outlook  (1902)  gives  a  statement  on  "Civil  Government  in  the 
Philippines ' ' ;  William  B .  Freer  writes  The  Philippine  Experiences 
of  an  American  Teacher,  A  Narrative  of  Work  and  Travel  in  the 
Philippine  Islands  (1906);  and  Dean  C.Worcester,  to  whom 
more  than  to  any  other  individual  belongs  the  credit  for  a 
remarkable  achievement  by  the  United  States  in  this  far-off 
region,  wrote  The  Philippine  Islands  and  their  People,  A  Record 
of  Personal  Observation  and  Experience  (1898).  A  most  inter 
esting  and  instructive  "inside"  account  is  Albert  Sonnichsen's 
Ten  Months  a  Captive  among  Filipinos  (1901).  Sonnichsen 
was  not  treated  badly  by  Filipinos,  and  he  was  fortunate  in 
not  falling  into  the  clutches  of  some  of  the  less  developed 
tribes. 

An  ethnological  survey  was  begun  and  has  been  carried  for 
ward  by  the  bureau  having  this  science  in  charge.  An  example 
of  results  is  the  admirable  study  by  Albert  Ernest  Jenks  of 
The  Bontoc  Igorot  (1905),  a  volume  of  266  pages  printed  at 
Manila.  These  Bontoc  Igorots  occupy  a  district  near  the 
centre  of  the  northern  part  of  the  island  of  Luzon,  and  are 
typical  primitive  Malayan  stock,  intelligent  and  amenable. 
"I  recall,"  says  Mr.  Jenks,  "with  great  pleasure  the  months 
spent  in  Bontoc  pueblo,  and  I  have  a  most  sincere  interest  in 
and  respect  for  the  Bontoc  Igorot." 

Besides  the  outlying  possession  of  the  Philippines,  the 
United  States  became  owner  by  purchase  in  1867  of  Russian 
America,  afterwards  named  Alaska.  Seward  was  ridiculed  for 
making  such  a  purchase  in  the  "frozen  "  north,  and  it  was  long 
derided  as  Seward's  "Ice-box."  The  vast  number  of  publica 
tions  favourably  describing  this  region  belie  this  term,  and  it  is 
now  well  understood  that  Seward  secured  a  treasure  house  for 
a  pittance. 

Seward's  "Address  on  Alaska  at  Sitka,  August  12,  1869," 
in  Old  South  Leaflets,  Vol.  6,  No.  133  (1904)  is  interesting  in  this 
connection.  There  are  a  great  number  of  reports,  and  narra 
tives  like  those  of  the  veteran  William  H.  Ball;  Captain  W.  R. 
Abercrombie's  Alaska,  1899,  Copper  River  Exploring  Expedition 
(1900) ;  Henry  T.  Allen's  Report  of  an  Expedition  to  the  Copper, 
Tanana,  and  Koyukuk  Rivers  in  the  Territory  of  Alaska  in  the 
Year  1885  (1887) ;  M.  M.  Ballou's  The  New  Eldorado,  a  Summer 


Alaska  167 

Tour  in  Alaska  (1889);  Reports  by  A.  H.  Brooks;  Miss  Scid- 
more's  Alaska  (1885),  etc. 

In  1899  a  private  expedition  was  organized  which  cruised  in 
a  chartered  ship  along  the  Alaskan  coast  and  across  Bering 
Sea  to  Siberia.  A  large  party  of  scientific  men  were  guests  of 
the  projector,  Edward  Henry  Harriman,  and  there  were  also 
several  artists.  The  results  were  published  in  a  series  of  vol 
umes  now  issued  by  the  Smithsonian  Institution.  The  first 
two  are  narrative,  with  chapters  by  John  Burroughs,  John 
Muir,  G.  K.  Gilbert,  and  others,  and  reproductions  of  paintings 
by  R.  Swain  Gifford,  Louis  A.  Fuertes,  and  Frederick  S.  Dellen- 
baugh.  Burroughs  in  addition  wrote  a  volume  entitled  Far 
and  Near  (1904),  and  there  were  magazine  articles  and  other 
books.  The  same  year  as  the  Harriman  Expedition,  Angelo 
Heilprin  published  Alaska  and  the  Klondike,  A  Journey  to  the 
New  Eldorado.  Gold  had  been  found  not  only  in  the  Klondike 
but  at  Nome,  in  the  sands  of  the  beach,  where  a  few  square 
feet  yielded  a  fortune,  and  in  other  parts. 

On  the  bleaker  eastern  arctic  shores  of  North  America  no 
gold  had  been  found  to  lead  armies  of  fortune-seekers  through 
incredible  hardships,  but  men  will  suffer  as  much,  or  more,  for 
an  idea,  and  there  was  the  idea  of  Polar  exploration  with  the 
ignis  fatuus  of  the  Pole  ever  beckoning.  A  library  of  many 
shelves  would  not  hold  all  the  books  relating  to  this  fateful 
quest.  Americans  joined  the  English  early  in  this  field,  in 
spired  by  a  desire  to  discover  the  actual  fate  of  Franklin.  In 
1850  Elisha  Kent  Kane  accompanied  a  party  equipped  by  Grin- 
nell  with  two  ships  under  Lieutenant  De  Haven.  They  reached 
Smith  Sound  as  described  in  The  United  States  Grinnell  Ex 
pedition  in  Search  of  Sir  John  Franklin  (1854).  Kane  went 
north  again  in  1853  and  reached  78°  41'.  This  expedition  is 
recorded  in  his  Arctic  Explorations:  The  Second  Grinnell  Expedi 
tion  (1856). 

Dr.  1. 1.  Hayes  followed  this  up  by  taking  advantage  of  experi 
ence  acquired  with  Kane  and  in  going  to  the  ice  regions  in  1860. 
He  wrote  The  Open  Polar  Sea  (1867),  An  Arctic  Boat  Journey 
(1860),  The  Land  of  Desolation  (1881);  and  the  Smithsonian 
printed  his  " Physical  Observations  in  the  Arctic  Seas" 
(Volume  15). 

One  of  the  most  devoted  and  interesting  of  all  Arctic  explor- 


168      Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846  1900 

ers  was  Charles  Francis  Hall.  His  heart  was  so  thoroughly  in 
the  work,  at  first  a  search  for  Franklin,  that  he  made  three 
fruitful  expeditions  and  would  have  continued  had  he  not 
mysteriously  died  in  full  health  on  the  last  journey.  The  first 
expedition  was  on  an  ordinary  whaling  ship  to  the  Eskimos, 
with  whom  he  lived  for  two  years  in  1860-62.  On  the  second 
trip  he  again  lived  with  Eskimos  in  1864-69,  and  on  the  third 
voyage  in  1871  in  the  Polaris  he  got  to  82°  1 1 ',  at  the  Polar  ocean 
via  Smith  Sound.  His  Narrative  of  the  [Third  or  Polaris]  North 
Polar  Expedition  (1876)  was  edited  by  C.  H.  Davis:  the  Nar 
rative  of  the  Second  Arctic  Expedition  to  Repulse  Bay  (1879)  was 
edited  by  Prof.  J.  E.  Nourse.  That  of  Hall's  first  journey  was 
published  in  1864,  the  year  in  which  he  started  on  his  second, 
with  the  title  A  rctic  Researches  and  Life  among  the  Eskimaux.  He 
was  the  first,  or  one  of  the  first,  to  note  that  the  Eskimos  knew 
the  geography  of  their  environment  and  could  make  maps 
of  it.  Some  reproductions  of  such  maps  occur  in  Hall's  volumes. 
E.  V.  Blake's  Arctic  Experiences  (1874)  contains  an  account  of 
Captain  George  E.  Tyson's  drift  on  the  ice-floe,  a  history  of  the 
Polaris  expedition,  and  the  rescue  of  the  Polaris  survivors. 

The  next  American  to  push  north  with  the  great  idea  was 
Lieutenant  De  Long  under  the  auspices  of  the  New  York 
Herald.  A  vessel  named  the  Jeanette,  supplied  with  provisions  for 
three  years,  sailed  in  July,  1879,  from  San  Francisco,  entering 
the  Polar  Sea  through  Bering  Strait.  The  Jeanette  was  sunk 
by  ice  in  June,  1 88 1 .  The  crew  got  to  Herald  Island  and  thence 
steered  for  the  mouth  of  the  Lena  River  in  three  boats,  of 
which  one  was  lost ;  and  the  crew  of  another,  including  De  Long, 
starved  and  froze  to  death  on  land,  while  George  W.  Melville 
and  nine  more  reached  a  small  native  village.  After  a  fruitless 
search  for  the  others  he  came  home,  to  return  again  to  the 
search.  He  wrote  In  the  Lena  Delta,  A  Narrative  of  the  Search 
for  Lieutenant  Commander  De  Long,  and  his  Companions  (1885). 
Another  volume  is,  The  Narrative  of  the  Jeanette  Arctic  Expedi 
tion  as  Related  by  the  Survivors,  etc.  Revised  by  Raymond  Lee 
Newcomb  (1882).  The  naval  officer  in  command  of  the  search 
party  (1882-84),  Giles  Bates  Harber,  found  De  Long's  body 
and  nine  other  remains,  and  brought  them  home  for  burial. 
He  wrote  a  Report  of  Lieut.  G.  B.  Harber  of  his  Search  for 
Missing  People  of  the  Jeanette  Expedition  (1884).  William 


Polar  Explorations  169 

H.  Gilder  wrote  Ice  Pack  and  Tundra  (1883)  on  the  same 
subject. 

A  Polar  expedition  which  accomplished  its  important  work 
and  yet  met  with  disaster  was  that  of  Greely ,  which  co-operated 
with  eight  other  international  stations  meteorologically.  His 
disaster  was  due  to  inefficiency  in  the  efforts  of  those  at  home 
to  get  the  annual  supplies  through.  One  of  Greely's  assist 
ants,  Lieutenant  Lockwood,  reached  the  highest  latitude  up 
to  that  time:  83°  24'.  Lockwood 's  journal  of  his  trip  farthest 
north  is  given  in  vol.  I  of  the  Report  mentioned  below  and  also 
is  described  in  The  White  World  (1902)  by  David  L.  Brainard, 
now  General  Brainard,  who  accompanied  Lockwood,  under 
the  title  "Farthest  North  with  Greely,"  an  excellent  account 
of  this  memorable  effort.  Charles  Lanman  in  Farthest  North 
(1885)  tells  the  life  story  of  Lieutenant  Lockwood,  who 
died  later  at  winter  quarters  of  starvation.  This  was  the 
Lady  Franklin  Bay  Expedition,  but  it  is  seldom  referred  to 
except  as  the  Greely  Expedition.  A  full  account  is  given  in 
Report  on  the  Proceedings  of  the  United  States  Expedition  to  Lady 
Franklin  Bay,  GrinnellLand,  by  A.  W.  Greely  (1888) ;  and  Greely 
also  wrote  Three  Years  of  Arctic  Service  (1886).  Winfield  S. 
Schley,  afterwards  Admiral  Schley,  commanded  the  second  re 
lief  expedition,  and  it  was  his  energy  and  determination  which 
put  his  ships  at  Cape  Sabine  just  in  time  to  save  the  survivors, 
who  had  to  be  carried  on  board.  Schley  made  a  report  pub 
lished  in  House  Documents  of  the  49th  Congress  and  wrote, 
with  J.  R.  Soley,  The  Rescue  of  Greely  (1885). 

Evelyn  B.  Baldwin  led  the  first  Ziegler  expedition  and  tells 
the  story  in  The  Search  for  the  North  Pole  (1896),  and  Anthony 
Fiala  headed  the  second  Ziegler  expedition,  recorded  in  his 
Fighting  the  Polar  Ice  (1906). 

Not  only  was  the  outer  approach  towards  the  Pole  hazard 
ous  and  difficult,  but  the  mathematical  point  lay  in  the  midst 
of  a  wide  frozen  ocean  with  hundreds  of  miles  of  barrier  ice 
constantly  on  the  move  and  frequently  splitting  into  broad 
"leads"  of  open  water,  interposing  forbidding  obstacles  to 
progress  or  to  return.  One  American  had  set  his  heart  on 
reaching  this  "inaccessible  spot,"  and  after  twenty-three  years 
of  amazing  perseverance,  Robert  Edwin  Peary  succeeded, 
6  April,  1909,  in  placing  the  flag  of  the  United  States  at  the 


i  ?o     Travellers  and  Explorers,  1846-1900 

point  where  all  meridians  meet  under  the  North  Star.  Peary 
deserved  every  honour  his  countrymen  could  give  him,  but,  alas, 
at  the  moment  of  triumph  the  voice  of  an  impostor  dimmed  the 
glory. 

The  North  Pole  was  won  by  the  adoption  of  Eskimo  clothing, 
snow  houses,  and  a  relay  dog-sledge  system.  Peary's  account  of 
his  long  continued  efforts  to  attain  this  object  of  centuries  is  found 
in  numerous  reports,  lectures,  and  articles,  but  his  chief  literary 
production  is  the  several  volumes :  Northward  over  the  Great  Ice 
(1898),  Snowland  Folk  (1904),  Nearest  the  Pole  (1907),  and 
The  North  Pole  (1910),  the  last  the  story  of  the  final  success. 
Besides  the  conquest  of  the  Pole,  Peary  determined  the  insul 
arity  of  Greenland  and  added  much  other  information  to  the 
Polar  records.  My  Arctic  Journal  (1893)  by  Mrs.  Josephine 
Debitsch  Peary  is  interesting  and  valuable  in  North  Pole 
literature. 

In  travel  and  exploration  in  the  period  which  we  have  thus 
briefly  reviewed,  there  are  many  notable  and  thrilling  events, 
but  there  is  nothing  that  exhibits  the  striving  after  an  ideal 
regardless  of  pecuniary  profit  or  physical  comfort  better  than 
the  determination  of  Peary  to  reach  the  frozen  centre  of  the 
Northern  Hemisphere.  He  has  a  competent  successor  in 
Vilhjalmur  Stefansson,  another  American  whose  whole  heart 
is  in  Arctic  exploration,  and  whose  bold  and  original  method 
of  relying  on  his  rifle  for  food,  even  on  the  wide  ice  of  the 
Polar  ocean,  has  been  rewarded  by  an  astonishing  success,  a 
success  which  has  revealed,  or  at  least  emphasized,  the  facts 
that  everywhere  in  the  farthest  North  there  exists  a  large 
amount  of  game. 

Stefansson  and  his  literary  output  do  not  properly  belong 
to  this  chapter,  but  in  closing  it  may  be  permissible  to  refer 
to  him  and  his  volume,  My  Life  with  the  Eskimo  (1913),  since 
he  has  accomplished  much  that  must  be  considered  in  connec 
tion  with  all  earlier  Arctic  exploration. 


CHAPTER  XV 

Later   Historians 

IT  it  evident,"  said  an  intelligent  librarian  in  1876,  "that 
diligent  workers  in  preserving  the  history  of  the  nation 
have  been  numerous  and  that  whatever  neglect  there  has 
been  in  the  pursuit  of  science  or  literature,  we  cannot  be  said 
to  have  equally  neglected  our  own  history."1  This  opinion, 
when  uttered,  was  supported  by  facts.  It  could  not  be  held 
today,  partly  because  science  and  literature  have  made  great 
progress  in  recent  years,  and  partly  because  the  writing  of 
history  has  recently  undergone  a  singular  development.  Al 
though  the  United  States  contains  at  present  several  times  as 
many  educated  people  as  in  1876,  there  exists  among  them  no 
historian  who  has  the  recognition  enjoyed  fifty  years  ago  by 
Bancroft,  Parkman,  and  some  others.  To  explain  this  change 
is  not  the  purpose  here.  It  is  sufficient  to  observe  the  progress 
--  of  the  change,  leaving  the  reader  to  make  his  own  deductions 
in  regard  to  its  causes. 

When  the  period  began,  history  writing  was  proceeding  on 
the  old  lines.  Books  were  written  about  men  and  events  with 
an  idea  of  pleasing  the  reader,  stimulating  his  admiration  for 
his  country  or  for  exceptional  men,  or  satisfying  a  commendable 
desire  for  information.  Such  histories  had  to  be  well  written 
and  had  an  advantage  if  they  contained  what  our  grandfathers 
called  "elevated  sentiment."  They  always  had  a  point  of 
view,  and  generally  made  the  reader  like  or  dislike  one  side  or 
the  other  of  some  controversy.  These  books  were  naturally  in 
constant  demand  among  a  people  who  were  still  in  the  habit  of 
viewing  everything  in  a  matter-of-fact  way,  and  to  whom  but 

1  Henry  A.  Homes,  Public  Libraries  in  the  United  States,  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Educa 
tion,  1876,  pp.  312-325. 

171 


I72  Later  Historians 

one  political  party  was  right  and  but  one  kind  of  man  was  great. 
The  change  that  came  into  these  ideas  amounts  to  a  revolu 
tion.  The  scientific  trend  of  the  mid-century  period  reached 
history  and  transformed  it.  Detachment  of  the  author  from 
his  feelings,  accuracy  of  statement,  dependence  on  original 
sources,  study  of  institutions,  and  increasing  attention  to  social 
and  economic  phenomena  became  the  chief  characteristics  of  a 
new  school  of  historians.  Under  such  conditions  history  be 
came  didactic,  informational,  and  philosophical;  and  at  the 
same  time  it  became  less  unified  and  vivid.  This  change  came 
at  a  time  when  the  general  tendency  in  literature  was  toward 
the  clever  and  amusing.  In  the  view  of  the  serious-minded 
man,  history  today  is  better  written  than  ever  before,  but  it  does 
not  maintain  the  place  it  held  in  1876  in  the  esteem  of  the  aver 
age  reader  of  intelligence.  This  chapter  deals  with  the  transi 
tion  from  the  old  to  the  new  school. 

Three  Underlying  Movements.  Accompanying  the  develop 
ment  of  the  new  school  are  three  movements  which  are  not  to 
be  ignored  by  one  who  wishes  to  understand  the  subject  as  a 
whole :  the  wide  growth  of  historical  societies,  the  creation  and 
publication  of  historical  "collections"  and  other  documents, 
and  the  transformation  of  historical  instruction  in  the  colleges 
and  universities. 

The  beginning  of  the  first  goes  back  to  1791,  when  the  Mas 
sachusetts  Historical  Society  was  founded  through  the  efforts 
of  Jeremy  Belknap. I  Other  societies  followed,  among  them 
the  New  York  Historical  Society  in  1804,  the  American  Anti 
quarian  Society  in  1812,  the  Pennsylvania,  Rhode  Island,  and 
Maine  Historical  Societies  in  1822,  the  New  Hampshire  His 
torical  Society  in  1823,  the  Georgia  Historical  Society  in  1839, 
the  Maryland  Historical  Society  in  1844,  the  New  Jersey  His 
torical  Society  in  1845,  the  Virginia  Historical  Society  in  1851, 
and  the  Delaware  Historical  Society  in  1864.  Through  Bel- 
knap's  efforts  the  Massachusetts  society  had  a  vigorous  life  from 
the  beginning,  collecting  and  publishing  valuable  material 
steadily.  None  of  the  other  societies  mentioned  did  so  well. 
Most  of  them  were  the  offsprings  of  local  pride  and  lived  thin 
and  shallow  lives  until  we  come  to  the  period  treated  in  this 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xvn. 


Historical  Societies  i?3 

chapter.  For  example,  the  New  York  society,  in  the  richest 
city  in  the  Union,  kept  up  a  battle  for  existence  for  forty  years 
and  was  saved  from  bankruptcy  only  by  aid  from  the  State 
treasury.  In  sixty-four  years  it  published  eight  small  vol 
umes  of  Collections,  besides  a  number  of  "discourses"  in  pam 
phlet  form.  In  the  late  forties  it  took  on  new  life,  obtained 
money  for  a  building  of  its  own,  and  in  1857  began  to  raise  the 
publication  fund  which  resulted  in  a  series  of  annual  Collec 
tions  from  1868  to  the  present. 

It  is  difficult  to  determine  the  origin  of  this  renewed  activity 
which  appeared  in  other  societies  than  the  New  York  Historical 
Society.  It  was  largely  affected  by  Sparks's,  Bancroft's,  and 
Force's  activities  in  the  fourth  decade  of  the  century, r  efforts 
so  widely  discussed  that  they  must  have  stimulated  new  efforts 
everywhere.  The  return  of  John  Romeyn  Brodhead  from 
Europe  in  1844  with  his  excellent  collection  of  transcripts  on 
New  York  history  and  their  publication  by  the  State  were  an 
other  strong  impulse  to  progress,  and  others  can  probably  be 
discovered  in  the  general  development  of  the  intellectual  con 
ditions  of  the  day.  It  is  clear  that  with  the  end  of  the  Civil 
War  the  historical  societies  of  the  Atlantic  States  had  passed 
out  of  their  dubious  phase  of  existence  and  had  begun  to  exer 
cise  the  important  influence  they  have  lately  had  in  support  of 
history. 

Beyond  the  Alleghanies  we  find  trace  of  the  same  awaken 
ing.  State  historical  societies  were  established  in  Ohio  in  1831, 
in  Wisconsin  and  Minnesota  in  1849,  in  Iowa  in  1857,  in  Kansas 
in  1875,  in  Nebraska  in  1878,  and  in  Illinois  and  Missouri  in 
1899.  Besides  these  state  societies  were  several  important 
privately  projected  societies:  as  the  Chicago  Historical  Society, 
founded  in  1855,  and  the  Missouri  Historical  Society  estab 
lished  in  1886.  Within  the  latter  part  of  the  period  under 
discussion  the  creation  of  societies  has  proceeded  rapidly 
throughout  the  country. 

Among  the  men  who  made  this  growth  possible  no  one 
stands  higher  than  Lyman  Copeland  Draper  (1815-91),  whose 
persistent  efforts  made  the  Wisconsin  society  pre-eminent 
among  State  historical  societies.  Fired  by  the  example  of 
Force  and  Sparks  in  Revolutionary  history,  he  made  his  field 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xvn. 


i74  Later  Historians 

the  Revolutionary  struggle  on  the  Western  border,  extending 
it  later  to  the  entire  Western  region.  He  travelled  widely  in 
the  West,  visiting  the  explorers  who  still  lived,  ransacking  old 
garrets,  winning  the  confidence  of  important  men,  and  collect 
ing  finally  a  vast  treasure  of  material  out  of  which  he  hoped  to 
write  a  detailed  history  of  the  frontier.  In  1853  he  became 
corresponding  secretary  and  chief  executive  officer  of  the  State 
Historical  Society  of  Wisconsin.  His  efforts  were  constantly 
and  wisely  directed  towards  increasing  its  collections,  enlarging 
the  scope  of  its  publications,  and  inducing  the  State  to  appro 
priate  the  funds  necessary  for  development.  He  is  rightly 
called  the  father  of  the  Society.  To  it  he  bequeathed  his  large 
collection  of  historical  material,  itself  a  worthy  nucleus  of  any 
society's  possessions.  His  work  was  continued  after  his  death 
by  Reuben  Gold  Thwaites  (1853-1913),  who  was  an  active 
writer  of  history  as  well  as  an  eminent  librarian.  His  service 
to  Western  history  has  not  been  surpassed. 

To  crown  the  series  of  events  attending  the  creation  of  his 
torical  societies  came  the  organization  of  the  American  Histor 
ical  Association  in  1884.  Herbert  Baxter  Adams,  of  the  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  was  the  most  active  person  in  bringing 
together  the  distinguished  group  of  scholars  who  launched  the 
enterprise  and  got  it  incorporated  by  the  national  government 
in  1889.  In  1895  The  American  Historical  Review  was  estab 
lished  in  connection  with  the  work  of  the  Association.  Taken 
together  these  two  expressions  of  historical  effort  have  bound 
up  the  interests  of  scattered  American  scholars,  intensified  their 
purpose,  clarified  their  understanding,  and  enabled  them  to  lay 
better  foundations  for  a  national  school  of  history  than  we  could 
have  expected  to  evolve  under  the  old  individualistic  method 
of  procedure.  They  have  had,  also,  an  important  influence  on 
the  writing  of  history,  although  it  is  probable  that  their  best 
work  is  in  the  nature  of  a  foundation  for  a  greater  structure  to 
be  erected  in  the  future. 

The  origin  of  the  great  collections  of  historical  documents 
in  the  United  States  goes  back  to  similar  enterprises  in  Europe. 
In  France  the  series  known  as  the  Acta  Sanctorum  had  been 
projected  in  the  seventeenth  century,  but  the  movement  had 
its  fruition  after  the  end  of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  when 
several  national  series  were  authorized  at  public  expense. 


Collections  i?5 

Among  them  the  most  conspicuous  were  the  Rolls  Series  in 
Great  Britain,  projected  in  1823,  the  Monumenta  Germanica 
in  Germany,  launched  in  1823,  and  the  Documents  Inedits  in 
France,  begun  in  1835.  The  desire  to  do  something  similar  for 
the  United  States  led  Peter  Force  to  attempt  his  American 
Archives,  which  was  authorized  by  an  act  of  Congress  passed 
2  March,  1833.  It  was  published  at  a  large  profit  to  the  com 
pilers  and  smacked  so  much  of  jobbery  that  great  dissatisfaction 
was  created  in  Congress  and  among  the  executive  officers. 
The  result  was  that  it  was  discontinued  by  Secretary  of  State 
Marcy  in  1855  when  only  nine  volumes  had  been  published. 
Force's  materials  were  badly  arranged  and  his  editorial  notes 
were  nearly  nil,  but  his  ideal  was  good.  Had  it  been  carried 
out  with  a  fairer  regard  for  economy  it  might  have  escaped  the 
rock  on  which  it  foundered.  As  it  was,  it  served  to  call  atten 
tion  to  a  field  in  which  much  needed  to  be  done,  and  it  is  prob 
able  that  the  collections  of  documents  undertaken  about  that 
time  in  the  states  owed  their  inception  in  a  considerable  measure 
to  his  widely  heralded  scheme. 

Of  these  efforts  the  most  noticeable  was  B  redhead's  tran 
scripts,  already  mentioned  in  this  chapter.  In  1849  the 
legislature  of  New  York  ordered  that  they  should  be  pub 
lished  at  the  expense  of  the  state.  They  appeared  in  due 
time  in  ten  quarto  volumes,  with  an  index  in  an  eleventh 
volume,  and  with  the  title  New  York  Colonial  Documents. 
With  some  supplementary  volumes  they  form  a  clear  and 
sufficient  and  permanent  foundation  for  New  York  colonial 
history. 

In  Pennsylvania  a  similar  movement  occurred  at  nearly  the 
same  time.  It  began  in  1837  when  the  legislature,  acting  on 
the  suggestion  of  the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania,  au 
thorized  the  publication  of  the  series  eventually  known  as  The 
Colonial  Records  of  Pennsylvania.  Failure  of  funds  in  the  panic 
days  that  followed  caused  the  suspension  of  the  series  when  only 
three  volumes  had  been  published,  but  it  was  resumed  in  1851 
on  an  enlarged  basis.  The  Colonial  Records  were  continued 
through  sixteen  volumes,  and  another  series,  The  Pennsylvania 
Archives,  was  authorized.  The  former  contains  the  minutes  of 
the  provincial  council,  and  the  latter  is  devoted  to  other  docu 
ments  of  historical  importance  on  the  colonial  period.  These 


J76  Later  Historians 

works  were  edited  with  much  care  by  Samuel  Hazard,  son  of 
that  Ebenezer  Hazard1  who  as  a  friend  and  mentor  of  Jeremy 
Belknap  had  made  himself  one  of  the  first  collectors  and  pub 
lishers  of  historical  documents  in  this  country.  Many  other 
states  have  followed  the  examples  of  New  York  and  Pennsyl 
vania.  North  Carolina,  however,  deserves  special  mention. 
Through  the  efforts  of  her  Secretary  of  State,  William  L.  Saun- 
ders,  ten  large  volumes  of  her  Colonial  Records,  followed  by  six 
teen  volumes  of  State  Records,  were  published  by  the  State 
between  the  years  1886  and  1905.  They  deal  with  great  com 
pleteness  with  the  history  of  North  Carolina  from  the  earliest 
days  to  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
and  they  place  the  state  in  the  lead  among  Southern  states  in 
this  essential  phase  of  historical  development. 

The  part  taken  by  colleges  and  universities  in  promoting 
historical  literature  is  equally  important  with  the  services  of 
the  historical  societies  and  the  projectors  of  great  collections 
of  documents.  The  process  by  which  instruction  shifted  from 
the  old  haphazard  method  into  the  modern  mode  of  instruc 
tion  which  regards  history  as  an  exhibition  of  the  life  process 
of  organized  society,  falls  almost  entirely  within  our  present 
period  of  discussion.  The  transition  was  made  gradually.  It 
means  that  the  older  subjects,  with  the  strictly  text-book  meth 
ods,  have  for  the  most  part  been  relegated  to  the  preparatory 
schools  and  the  lower  college  classes,  while  lectures  by  special 
ists  have  become  the  means  of  instructing  and  inspiring  the 
upper  classmen  among  the  undergraduates,  and  special  research 
in  seminaries  has  been  employed  to  make  historical  scholars  out 
of  graduate  students. 

The  origin  of  the  movement  was  in  Germany,  from  whose 
universities  many  enthusiastic  American  students  returned  to 
infuse  new  life  into  institutions  in  their  native  land  or  to  give 
direction  to  the  instruction  in  newly  established  seats  of  learn 
ing.  In  the  former  the  change  came  gradually,  as  in  Harvard, 
which  established  the  first  distinct  chair  of  history  when  Jared 
Sparks  was  made  McLean  Professor  in  1839.  It  is  not  believed 
that  the  ''occasional  examinations  and  lectures"  he  was  re 
quired  to  give  greatly  advanced  historical  instruction  in  the 
college.  Distinct  progress,  however,  was  made  under  his  suc- 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xvn. 


History  in  the  Universities  i?7 

cessors,  and  the  new  life  that  came  to  the  institution  in  the  time 
of  President  Eliot  completed  the  transformation  in  history  as 
in  other  branches  of  instruction.  Similar  courses  of  develop 
ment  occurred  in  other  universities. 

Before  this  process  was  completed  at  Harvard  or  at  any  other 
Eastern  university  it  was  well  established  under  the  influence 
of  Andrew  D.  White  (1832-1918)  at  the  University  of  Michigan 
and  Cornell  University.  Returning  from  Europe  he  became  pro 
fessor  of  history  in  the  former  institution  in  1857  and  captivated 
the  students  by  his  brilliant  lectures.  In  his  classes  was  Charles 
Kendall  Adams  (1835-1902),  who  so  impressed  the  master  that 
he  was  made  professor  of  history  in  Michigan  when  White 
became  president  of  Cornell  in  1867.  Adams  became  presi 
dent  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin  in  1891.  Thus  it  hap 
pened  that  the  influence  of  Andrew  D.  White  in  promoting 
modern  historical  instruction  was  brought  to  bear  on  three  of 
the  leading  universities  of  the  country,  and  that  three  strong 
departments  of  history  sprang  into  existence. 

At  Columbia  University  the  zeal  and  wisdom  of  Professor 
John  W.  Burgess  brought  into  existence  a  department  of  po 
litical  science  in  which  history  had  an  important  place,  with 
results  that  have  been  far  reaching.  He  gathered  around  him  an 
able  group  of  assistants  and  set  standards  which  have  had  much 
influence  in  a  university  which,  as  the  event  showed,  was  about 
to  take  a  large  place  in  our  educational  life.  At  Johns  Hopkins 
the  same  kind  of  work  was  done  by  Herbert  B.  Adams  (1850- 
1901) ,  whose  name  will  ever  have  place  in  the  story  of  historical 
development  in  this  country.  He  was  born  at  Shutesbury,  Mas 
sachusetts,  graduated  at  Amherst  in  1872,  was  awarded  the  doc 
torate  at  Heidelberg  in  1876,  and  was  appointed  a  fellow  at  the 
Johns  Hopkins  University  in  the  same  year.  The  illustrious 
position  of  that  university  offered  a  stage  for  the  development  of 
his  talents.  Among  the  mature  and  capable  students  who  gath 
ered  around  him  he  became  an  enthusiastic  leader.  No  man 
knew  better  how  to  stimulate  a  young  man  to  attempt  author 
ship.  In  establishing  The  Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies 
in  Historical  and  Political  Science  he  opened  a  new  door  of 
publication  to  American  students.  He  took  personal  interest 
in  his  students  after  they  left  the  university  and  sought  to  save 
them  from  the  dry  rot  that  menaces  the  young  doctor  when  he 


VOL.  in — ia 


J?8  Later  Historians 

first  realizes  academic  success.  It  was  in  this  work  for  his 
torical  study  and  in  the  organization  of  the  American  Histori 
cal  Association  that  Adams's  best  service  was  done.  He  wrote 
many  monographs  on  subjects  of  occasional  importance.  His 
one  large  book,  The  Life  and  Writings  of  Jared  Sparks  (2  vols., 
1 893) ,  was  received  with  disfavour  by  a  public  whom  Adams  and 
men  like  him  had  already  taught  to  condemn  Sparks's  uncritical 
methods.  Other  directors  of  historical  research  have  been 
keener  critics  of  their  students  and  have  given  them  a  larger 
portion  of  the  divine  doubts  that  makes  the  historian  proof 
against  credulity;  but  no  other  has  sent  them  forth  with  a 
stronger  desire  to  become  historians. 

One  of  the  effects  of  the  development  of  graduate  instruc 
tion  is  that  teachers  of  history  write  most  of  the  history  now 
being  written  in  the  United  States.  The  historian  who  is 
merely  a  historian  is  rarely  encountered.  Whether  the  result 
be  good  or  bad  is  not  a  part  of  this  discussion ;  but  the  process 
promotes  the  separation  of  the  writer  from  his  readers,  which 
may  or  may  not  be  fortunate.  The  professor-historian,  having 
his  subsistence  in  his  college  salary,  may  defy  the  bad  taste  of 
his  public  and  write  history  in  accordance  with  the  best  canons 
of  the  schools:  he  may  come  to  despise  the  just  demand  that 
history  be  so  written  that  it  may  maintain  its  place  in  the  litera 
ture  that  appeals  to  serious  and  intelligent  people  who  are  not 
specialists. 

Minor  Historians  of  the  Old  School.  When  the  writing  of 
history  began  to  undergo  the  change  that  has  been  described, 
a  number  of  men  were  doing  creditable  work  in  the  old  way. 
Although  they  worked  in  limited  fields,  they  produced  books 
which  are  still  respected  by  persons  interested  in  those  fields, 
and  their  names  are  essentially  connected  with  the  history  of 
our  historians.  A  "minor"  historian  is  not  necessarily  an  un 
important  historian. 

One  of  the  striking  things  in  this  connection  is  the  rise  of 
New  York  as  a  centre  for  such  historians.  While  Boston  gloried 
in  the  possession  of  Sparks,  Palfrey,  Hildreth,  Prescott,  Motley, 
and  Parkman,  New  York  produced  a  group  of  smaller  men  who 
made  the  vocation  of  historian  both  pleasant  and  respectable 
in  the  metropolis  of  wealth.  Among  them  was  Dr.  John  Wake- 


The  Old  School  J79 

field  Francis  (1789-1861),  genial  friend  of  letters  and  literary 
men  and  last  of  a  series  of  literary  doctors  which  included 
Cadwallader  Golden,1  David  Hosack,  Hugh  Williamson,  and 
Samuel  L.  Mitchill, 2  not  to  mention  Benjamin  Rush  and  David 
Ramsay3,  who  lived  elsewhere.  Francis's  Old  New  York  (1858) 
is  a  charming  description  of  the  city  under  a  generation  then 
vanishing.  Others  of  the  group  were :  Henry  Onderdonck,  Jr. 
(1804-86),  who  wrote  Annals  of  Hempstead  (1878),  Queens 
County  in  Olden  Times  (1865),  and  other  books  on  Long  Island 
history;  Gabriel  Furman  (1800-53),  who  left  a  most  accurate 
book  in  his  Notes  .  .  .  Relating  to  the  Town  of  Brooklyn 
(1824);  Rev.  Francis  Lister  Hawks  (1789-1866),  best  remem 
bered  for  his  History  of  North  Carolina  (1857-58)  and  his 
documents  relating  to  the  Anglican  Church  in  the  colonies; 
and  Henry  Barton  Dawson  (1821-1889),  a  turbulent  spirit  who 
served  history  best  as  editor  of  The  Historical  Magazine.  John 
Romeyn  Brodhead  (1814-73),  whose  transcripts  have  been  men 
tioned,  wrote  an  excellent  History  of  New  York,  1609-1691 
(1853-71).  He  was  one  of  the  best  esteemed  members  of  the 
New  York  group. 

Two  Catholic  historians  added  much  to  its  efficiency:  Ed 
ward  Bailey  O'Callaghan  (1797-1873)  and  John  Dawson  Gil- 
mary  Shea  (1824-92).  The  first  was  an  educated  Irishman, 
an  agitator  in  the  Canadian  rebellion  of  1837  who  fled  for 
safety  to  Albany  when  the  uprising  collapsed,  and  a  historian 
of  good  ability.  His  History  of  New  Netherland  (1846-48)  and 
the  Documentary  History  of  New  York  (1849-51)  introduced  him 
to  the  reading  public.  He  became  connected  with  the  office  of 
Secretary  of  State  in  Albany,  edited  the  ten  volumes  of  Brod- 
head's  transcripts,  and  brought  out  many  other  documents  and 
reprints,  always  working  hard  and  conscientiously.  Shea,  who 
was  educated  to  be  a  Jesuit  priest  but  withdrew  from  his  novi 
tiate  before  taking  final  vows,  was  most  interested  in  church  his 
tory.  His  largest  work  was  a  History  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  the 
United  States  ( 1 886-92) ,  in  four  volumes ;  but  he  is  best  known  in 
secular  history  for  his  studies  in  the  French  history  of  North 
America.  His  Cramoisy  edition  of  the  Jesuit  Relations  ( 1 857-66) 
and  his  editions  of  Charlevoix's  History  of  New  France  (1866-72), 

1  See  Book  I,  Chap.  n.  a  See  Book  II,  Chap.  n. 

3  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xvn. 


Later  Historians 


Hennepin's  Description  of  Louisiana  (1880),  and  other  sim 
ilar  original  works  were  valuable  additions  to  the  assets  of 
historians  in  this  particular  field.  By  calling  attention  to  the 
French  origins  of  our  trans-  Alleghany  region  O'Callaghan  and 
Shea  gave  balance  to  a  period  of  our  history  which  had  previ 
ously  been  too  much  accented  on  the  English  side,  and  opened 
the  way  for  the  fuller  and  more  appreciated  volumes  of  Francis 
Parkman. 

Two  college  professors  belong  in  this  group  of  historians, 
one  a  teacher  of  chemistry  the  other  a  teacher  of  Greek  but 
both  best  remembered  as  historians.  Henry  Martyn  Baird 
(1832-1906)  took  for  his  theme  the  history  of  the  Huguenots, 
which  he  presented  in  the  following  instalments  :  History  of  the 
Rise  of  the  Huguenots  (2  vols.,  1879),  The  Huguenots  and  Henry 
of  Navarre  (2  vols.,  1886),  and  The  Huguenots  and  the  Revocation 
of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  (2  vols.,  1895).  Besides  these  books  he 
wrote  a  short  life  of  Theodore  Beza  (1899).  His  work  was  done 
carefully  and  in  great  detail.  It  was  well  written,  but  it  always 
took  the  side  of  the  Huguenots,  and  it  is  to  be  classed  with  the 
history  of  the  old  school,  of  which  it  was  a  notable  and  success 
ful  specimen. 

John  William  Draper  (1811-82)  had  won  an  assured  posi 
tion  as  a  scientist  before  he  turned  to  history.  Like  Professor 
Baird  he  was  a  member  of  the  faculty  of  New  York  University. 
At  the  middle  of  the  century  the  idea  that  history  is  an 
exact  science,  an  idea  that  grew  out  of  the  teachings  of  Auguste 
Comte,  had  been  widely  advocated  by  scientific  men.  Two 
men,  Buckle  in  London  and  Draper  in  New  York,  working 
independently  of  each  other,  undertook  to  give  the  idea  its 
application.  Buckle  published  the  first  volume  of  his  History 
of  Civilization  in  England  in  1857,  and  the  second  in  1861  ;  fur 
ther  efforts  ceased  with  his  death  in  1862.  Draper  published 
his  book,  The  History  of  the  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe, 
in  1862.  We  are  assured  that  it  was  practically  complete  be 
fore  the  first  volume  of  Buckle  appeared  and  that  it  remained 
in  the  author's  hands  in  manuscript  during  the  internal. 

In  our  day  the  world  has  not  a  great  interest  in  history  as  an 
exact  science;  but  in  1862  the  work  of  Comte,  Buckle,  Darwin, 
and  Spencer  had  prepared  it  for  another  attitude.  Draper 
reaped  the  harvest  thus  made  ready,  and  his  book  quickly 


Histories  of  the  Civil  War  181 

passed  through  several  editions,  in  the  United  States  and  Eu 
rope.  Its  thesis  was  that  history  results  from  the  action  on 
human  activity  of  climate,  soil,  natural  resources,  and  other 
physical  surroundings.  Having  stated  it  in  principle,  he  took 
up  the  history  of  nation  after  nation,  showing  to  his  own  satis 
faction  that  his  theory  operated  successfully  in  each.  He  had 
little  history  to  begin  with  and  his  statements,  taken  from  un 
critical  secondary  works,  were  full  of  errors.  The  same  failing 
appears  even  more  plainly  in  his  History  of  the  American  Civil 
War  (3  vols.,  1867).  His  popularity  was  largely  promoted  by 
his  clear  and  vivid  style  and  by  the  frankness  with  which  he 
repudiated  what  Comte  called  theological  and  metaphysical 
states  of  knowledge,  demanding  that  all  truth  should  be  studied 
scientifically.  Since  most  of  his  criticisms  were  aimed  at  the 
Roman  church  he  did  not  arouse  the  ire  of  the  Protestants. 
His  History  of  the  Conflict  between  Religion  and  Science  (1874), 
his  last  work,  found  place  in  the  same  series  in  which  appeared 
Bagehot's  Physics  and  Politics,  Spencer's  Sociology,  and  Tyn- 
dall's  Forms  of  Water.  It  was  one  of  the  most  widely  demanded 
of  the  group. 

Draper's  history  of  the  Civil  War  brings  him  into  relation 
with  a  group  of  patriotic  writers  who  attempted  to  record  the 
history  of  that  struggle.  The  books  that  first  appeared,  as 
William  Swin  ton's  Campaigns  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  (1866) 
and  Horace  Greeley's  American  Conflict  (2  vols.,  1864-66), 
were  tinged  with  prejudice,  however  much  the  authors  strove 
to  keep  it  down.  After  ten  years  or  more  had  passed  a  calmer 
attitude  existed,  and  we  encounter  a  number  of  books  in  which 
is  discerned  a  serious  striving  to  attain  impartiality.  In  this 
stage  the  first  notable  effort  was  the  series  published  by  the 
Scribners  known  as  Campaigns  of  the  Civil  War  (13  vols.,  1881- 
90),  in  which  prominent  military  men  co-operated.  It  was 
followed  by  a  similar  series  called  The  Navy  in  the  Civil  War 
(3  vols.,  1885).  Another  co-operative  work,  much  read  at  the 
time  and  still  valuable,  was  Battles  and  Leaders  of  the  Civil  War 
(4  vols.,  1887-89),  a  collection  of  short  papers  written  by 
participants  in  the  war,  and  presenting  the  views  on  both  sides 
of  the  struggle.  Robert  Underwood  Johnson  and  Clarence 
Clough  Buel  were  the  editors  whose  good  judgment  and  indus 
try  made  the  series  a  striking  success.  The  same  spirit  of  im- 


1 82  Later  Historians 

partiality  was  observed  in  The  Story  of  the  Civil  War  by  John 
Codman  Ropes  (1836-99),  which  came  to  an  end  after  two 
volumes  had  been  published  ( 1 894  and  1 898) .  To  many  people 
Ropes' s  volumes  seemed  to  promise  the  best  military  history  of 
the  war  we  were  likely  to  have. 

A  large  number  of  books  of  personal  experience  appeared 
from  the  hands  of  men  who  had  taken  a  prominent  part  in  the 
war,  and  some  of  them  have  merit  as  literature.  The  most 
notable  in  content  and  style  was  Ulysses  Simpson  Grant's 
Personal  Memoirs  (2  vols.,  1885,  1886).  It  was  written  in 
simple  and  direct  language  and  dealt  with  things  in  which 
the  humblest  citizens  could  feel  interest.  Other  important 
books  of  similar  nature  were:  William  Tecumseh  Sherman's 
Memoirs  (2  vols.,  1875);  Philip  Henry  Sheridan's  Personal 
Memoirs  (2  vols.,  1888);  George  Brinton  McClellan's  My  Own 
Story  (1887) ;  and  Charles  Anderson  Dana's  Recollections  of  the 
Civil  War  (1898). 

Apart  from  all  other  works  on  the  Civil  War  is  that  which 
appeared  with  the  title  Abraham  Lincoln,  a  History  (10  vols., 
1890),  by  John  George  Nicolay  and  John  Hay,  both  of  whom 
had  been  private  secretaries  of  the  war  president.  In  complete 
ness  of  treatment,  clearness  of  statement,  and  fair  discussion  of 
the  men  and  problems  that  Lincoln  encountered,  it  is  one  of  the 
best  historical  works  of  the  generation  in  which  it  was  written. 
Of  the  joint  authors  Nicolay  (1832-1901)  was  an  historian  of 
unusual  breadth  of  view  and  industry  while  Hay1  (1838-1905) 
was  noted  for  his  clear  and  natural  style. 

The  Southern  histories  of  the  war  pass  through  the  two 
stages  just  described  in  the  Northern  histories.  Immediately 
after  the  conflict  ended  there  were  published  such  books  as 
Edward  Albert  Pollard's  The  Lost  Cause  (1866)  and  Alexander 
Hamilton  Stephens's  Constitutional  View  of  the  Late  War  be 
tween  the  States  (2  vols.,  1868-70),  both  warmly  Southern. 
So  much  belated  that  it  might  have  been  less  apologetic  was 
Jefferson  Davis's  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Confederate  Government 
(2  vols.,  1881).  It  was,  however,  what  might  have  been  ex 
pected  under  the  circumstances,  an  official  statement  of  the 
Southern  side  of  the  question.  No  fair  and  ample  Southern 
history  of  the  war  has  been  published. 
1  See  also  Book  III,  Chaps,  x  and  xi. 


Americana  183 

"The  Great  Subject."  Reverence  for  worthy  deeds  or  men 
characterized  the  histories  written  by  the  men  mentioned  in  the 
preceding  section.  To  them  succeeded  a  group  who  were  car 
ried  away  by  what  John  Carter  Brown  called  "the  great  sub 
ject,"  that  is,  the  age  of  discovery  and  exploration.  Columbus 
and  the  men  and  things  of  his  age  were  their  chief  interest. 
Some  of  them  were  collectors  of  rare  books  in  this  field,  others 
were  historians  merely,  and  still  others  were  both  collectors 
and  writers.  The  efforts  of  all  were  closely  interrelated.  The 
significance  of  the  group  is  that  here  was  the  first  theme  on 
which  the  American  historians  made  an  exhaustive  search  into 
the  original  sources  of  information  and  wrote  out  their  conclu 
sions  with  acute  reasoning  regardless  of  preconceived  opinions. 
It  was  a  transition  phase  from  the  old  to  the  new  school. 

Book  collectors  who  were  historians  existed  in  England 
and  the  United  States  long  before  the  period  now  under  dis 
cussion.  Among  them  were  Peter  Force,  George  Bancroft, 
Jared  Sparks,  William  H.  Prescott,  and  most  other  writers  of 
history.  Public  libraries  were  undeveloped,  and  it  was  difficult 
for  a  man  to  write  history  who  was  not  able  to  buy  a  large  por 
tion  of  the  books  he  used  in  collecting  information.  By  1840 
the  library  of  Harvard  University  was  recognized  as  one  of  the 
important  buyers  when  a  rich  collection  came  into  the  markets, 
but  it  was  only  with  the  advent  of  the  Astor  Library  in  1854 
and  the  donation  of  James  Lenox's  rich  collection  to  the  public 
in  1870  that  New  York  had  public  libraries  in  which  a  student 
of  history  could  find  what  he  needed.  The  Boston  Public 
Library,  incorporated  in  1848,  the  Athenaeum,  a  private  founda 
tion,  and  the  Harvard  College  library  gave  the  same  kind  of 
support  to  the  historians  of  Boston. 

Meanwhile  a  group  of  wealthy  men  had  taken  up  the  occu 
pation  of  collector,  most  of  them  dealing  in  early  Americana. 
John  Carter  Brown,  of  Providence,  led  off  in  the  movement,  and 
found  worthy  seconds  in  James  Lenox  and  Samuel  L.  M.  Bar 
low  of  New  York,  George  Brinsley  of  Hartford,  and  Colonel 
Thomas  Aspinwall,  who  was  long  the  American  consul  in  Lon 
don.  The  collections  of  the  first  two  became  permanent  and 
were  converted  into  libraries  open  to  the  public.  The  collec 
tions  of  the  others  were  placed  on  the  market  and  passed  for  the 
most  part,  after  various  vicissitudes,  into  the  public  libraries. 


1 84  Later  Historians 

It  was  the  persistent  idea  of  most  of  these  collectors  to  gather 
every  item  possible  on  Columbus  and  his  associates.  The 
process  naturally  stimulated  interest  in  history  writing. 

The  best  outgrowth  of  this  movement  was  Henry  Harrisse 
(1823-1910).  He  was  born  in  Paris,  removed  to  the  United 
States  when  still  a  boy,  graduated  from  the  University  of  South 
Carolina,  taught  in  the  University  of  North  Carolina,  and  at 
length  became  a  lawyer  with  a  small  practice  in  New  York  City. 
Here  he  came  into  contact  with  Samuel  L.  M.  Barlow,  who 
proved  his  fast  friend  and  mentor.  Thus  inspired  he  decided 
to  write  a  history  of  the  rise,  decline,  and  fall  of  the  Spanish 
empire  in  America.  His  first  step  was  to  undertake  to  make  a 
bibliography  of  the  Columbian  period,  using  Barlow's  library 
as  a  basis  and  examining  further  the  other  collections  in  the 
city.  The  results  he  embodied  in  his  Notes  on  Columbus  ( 1 866) , 
in  which  not  only  titles  were  given  but  much  additional  informa 
tion  in  regard  to  editions  and  contents.  Favourable  criticisms 
came  from  collectors  and  he  decided  to  make  a  bibliography  of 
Americana  for  the  years  1492  to  1551.  Thus  was  prepared  his 
Bibliotheca  Americana  Vetustissima,  which  appeared  in  1866. 
The  few  interested  in  the  subject  were  loud  in  their  praise,  but 
the  general  public  were  so  indifferent  that  the  publisher  threw 
a  large  part  of  the  edition  on  the  market  at  a  sacrifice.  Harrisse 
was  so  indignant  that  he  set  out  for  France,  unwilling  to  reside 
in  a  country  in  which  his  researches  were  so  slightly  esteemed. 

In  Paris  he  received  a  warm  welcome.  Ernest  Desjardins 
brought  him  to  the  notice  of  the  Societe  de  Geographic  in 
flattering  terms,  declaring  him  the  author  of  ' '  the  first  work  of 
solid  erudition  which  American  science  has  produced."  He 
assumed  a  prominent  place  at  once  among  French  savants. 
Continuing  his  profession  of  lawyer  he  was  retained  to  give 
advice  to  the  American  government  in  regard  to  legal  matters 
connected  with  the  construction  of  the  Panama  Canal.  The 
remuneration  was  so  satisfactory  that  he  was  able,  by  good 
management,  to  lay  the  foundation  of  a  fortune  amounting  at 
his  death  to  a  million  francs.  Freed  from  financial  anxieties 
he  could  give  himself  to  a  career  of  scholarly  labour. 

Thirty  volumes  and  a  large  number  of  pamphlets  remain  to 
attest  the  persistence  of  his  efforts.  He  entered  the  hitherto 
uncharted  region  of  the  discoverers,  explored  it  with  the  great- 


Henry  Harrisse  185 

est  attention  to  details,  debated  every  disputed  point  with 
great  ability,  and  revealed  to  the  world  not  only  its  metes  and 
bounds  but  its  most  salient  interior  features.  Not  all  of  his 
conclusions  have  been  accepted  by  his  successors,  but  no  man 
has  opposed  him  without  acknowledging  that  Harrisse  made 
possible  the  investigations  of  his  critics.  Of  his  Discovery 
of  North  America  (1892),  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  whole 
field  of  his  labour  made  when  he  had  advanced  far  in  his  own 
development,  Professor  Edward  Gaylord  Bourne  said  that  it 
was  ' '  the  greatest  contribution  to  the  history  of  American  geo 
graphy  since  Humboldt's  Examen." 

Harrisse  gave  a  large  portion  of  his  thought  to  three  great 
figures  in  the  period  of  discovery,  Columbus,  Cabot,  and  Ves- 
puccius,  planning  an  exhaustive  book  on  each.  On  the  first  he 
produced  his  Jean  et  Sebastien  Cabot  (1882),  besides  several 
smaller  pieces;  and  on  the  second  he  wrote  his  Christophe  Co- 
lombe  (2  vols. ,  1 884-85) .  On  the  third  he  collected  a  great  mass 
of  material,  discussing  some  of  the  points  in  monographs,  but 
death  intervened  before  a  final  and  exhaustive  work  was  ac 
tually  written.  Like  a  true  explorer  he  was  ever  seeking  new 
knowledge,  correcting  in  one  voyage  errors  made  in  another. 
He  did  not  hesitate  to  alter  his  views  when  newly  discovered 
facts  demanded  it.  He  was  strong  in  defending  his  opinions 
and  did  not  escape  controversies  with  those  who  opposed  them. 
But  he  was  a  true  scholar  and  no  love  of  ease  or  honour  tempted 
him  away  from  the  joyful  toil  of  his  studies.  Although  he 
spent  the  best  part  of  his  life  in  Paris,  he  considered  himself  an 
American  to  the  end.  He  bequeathed  his  annotated  set  of  his 
own  writings  together  with  the  most  valuable  of  his  manuscripts 
and  maps  to  the  Library  of  Congress. 

Harrisse's  achievements  tend  to  dwarf  the  work  of  two  New 
York  historians  who  took  a  high  stand  in  the  circle  out  of  which 
he  got  his  first  impulses  to  historical  scholarship.  James  Car 
son  Brevoort  (1818-87)  was  a  business  man  who  gave  his 
leisure  to  history.  His  Verrazano,  the  Navigator  (1874)  was  an 
important  book  on  that  phase  of  our  early  history.  Henry 
Cruse  Murphy  (1810-82),  a  lawyer  and  Democratic  leader  of 
high  character,  found  himself  stranded  when  the  Civil  War 
swept  his  party  into  a  hopeless  minority.  Unwilling  to  twist 
himself  into  a  Republican  he  retired  from  politics  and  devoted 


1 86  Later  Historians 

himself  to  history  and  the  care  of  the  large  library  he  had  col 
lected.  One  of  his  books,  The  Voyage  of  Verrazano  (1875), 
taking  the  opposite  side  from  Brevoort's,  was  received  as  the 
best  on  its  side  of  the  controversy. 

These  men  represent  the  early  manifestations  of  * '  the  great 
subject."  Two  others,  Justin  Winsor  (1831-97)  and  Edward 
Gaylord  Bourne  (1860-1908),  stand  at  the  point  of  its  fruition. 
Alike  in  scholarship  and  deep  interest  in  the  earliest  phase  of  our 
history,  they  were  widely  apart  in  their  use  of  language  to  ex 
press  their  ideas.  Winsor  wrote  a  tedious  page,  filled  with 
details ;  Bourne  wrote  in  a  simple  and  well  digested  style  which 
did  not  lack  in  clearness  and  charm  of  expression. 

Winsor  was  of  a  prosperous  Boston  mercantile  family  and 
began  life  with  every  opportunity  that  a  Boston  boy  could  de 
sire.  He  withdrew  from  Harvard  because  he  disliked  the  rou 
tine  of  the  college  classes  but  read  widely  in  the  best  literature. 
Determined  to  become  a  literary  man  he  gave  himself  to  poetry 
and  the  drama  until  he  realized  that  he  was  not  likely  to 
succeed  in  creative  literature.  During  this  period  of  his  life  he 
wrote  much  for  the  Boston  periodicals  and  projected  a  defini 
tive  life  of  David  Garrick  which  was  never  completed.  In  1868 
he  became  librarian  of  the  Boston  Public  Library  and  served 
with  such  success  that  he  was  called  to  the  same  position  at 
Harvard  in  1877,  where  he  remained  the  rest  of  his  life. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  he  assumed  editorial  direction  of 
a  co-operative  history  of  Boston,  for  which  the  leading  men  of 
the  city  had  been  selected  to  write  special  chapters.  The  work 
was  published  in  four  volumes  as  The  Memorial  History  of 
Boston  (1880-82).  Winsor's  part  was  so  well  done  that  he  was 
asked  by  the  publishers  to  undertake  a  similar  work  on  Ameri 
can  history.  Thus  was  written  and  published  his  Narrative  and 
Critical  History  of  America  (8  vols.,  1886-89),  probably  the 
most  stimulating  book  in  American  history  that  has  been  pro 
duced  in  this  country.  The  editor's  part  was  the  best  and 
consisted  chiefly  in  an  abundance  of  bibliographical  and  carto- 
logical  notes.  Before  the  appearance  of  the  book  the  student  had 
been  left  to  stumble  as  he  could  toward  his  bibliography.  Now 
he  had  in  one  work  such  a  wealth  of  this  information  that  he 
could  always  have  a  point  of  departure  for  his  studies  and 
need  not  hesitate  in  the  early  stages  of  any  investigation.  The 


Justin  Winsor;  Edward  Gaylord  Bourne   187 

book,  however,  was  richer  in  its  suggestions  on  colonial  and 
Revolutionary  history  than  on  the  later  period;  and  this  was 
because  the  editor's  interest  was  strongest  in  our  early  history. 

Winsor  came  under  the  influence  of  "the  great  subject," 
and  probably  his  most  intense  study  was  given  to  the  achieve 
ment  of  the  explorers.  He  was  a  high  authority  on  early 
American  cartography.  His  interest  in  the  period  of  discovery 
led  him  to  write  his  Christopher  Columbus  and  How  he  Received 
and  Imparted  the  Spirit  of  Discovery  (1891).  It  was  a  minute 
and  conscientious  discussion  of  the  career  of  the  discoverer  and 
of  the  progress  of  geographical  knowledge  in  the  Columbian 
period.  He  carried  on  the  history  of  discoveries  and  explora 
tions  in  three  other  books:  From  Cartier  to  Frontenac  (1894), 
The  Mississippi  Basin  (1895),  and  The  Westward  Movement 
(1897).  These  books  proved  disappointing  to  persons  who 
sought  readable  narratives.  They  were  filled  with  details  and 
poorly  constructed;  but  the  maps  and  cartological  informa 
tion  in  them  were  very  valuable. 

In  fact,  in  Winsor's  philosophy  the  historian's  function  was  to 
burrow  into  the  past  for  the  facts  that  had  been  overlooked  by 
other  writers,  and  when  the  facts  were  found  he  took  little  pains 
how  he  arranged  them  before  the  eyes  of  the  reader. 

I  may  confess  [he  said],  that  I  have  made  history  a  thing  of 
shreds  and  patches.  I  have  only  to  say  that  the  life  of  the  world 
is  a  thing  of  shreds  and  patches,  and  it  is  only  when  we  consider 
the  well  rounded  life  of  the  individual  that  we  find  permeating  the 
record  a  reasonable  constancy  of  purpose.  This  is  the  province  of 
biography,  and  we  must  not  confound  biography  with  history. 

Of  ' '  shreds-and-patches  "  history  Justin  Winsor  was  a  master. 
He  was  loved  of  the  student  and  nearly  unknown  to  the  reader. 
Professor  Bourne  was  the  son  of  a  village  minister  in  New 
England.  Unlike  Winsor,  his  life  was  always  overcast  with  the 
problem  of  earning  a  living.  Lameness  from  childhood  handi 
capped  his  efforts  and  eventually  resulted  in  his  death  when  he 
had  just  demonstrated  his  capacity  for  historical  work  of  the 
first  class.  Wide  information,  good  judgment,  and  a  keen  eye 
for  inaccuracies  characterized  his  work.  A  sense  of  proportion 
is  ever  found  in  the  structure  of  his  books,  and  his  language  is 
clear  and  sometimes  graceful.  In  the  latter  part  of  his  life  he 


Later  Historians 


came  under  the  sway  of  "the  great  subject,"  and  when  he  died 
he  was  the  leading  Americanist  in  the  United  States.  One  small 
book,  Spain  in  America  (1905),  remains  as  an  expression  of 
this  phase  of  his  activity  ;  but  it  is  so  well  done  that  it  is  not 
likely  to  be  superseded  as  long  as  we  hold  our  present  views  on 
the  period  of  the  explorers.  In  his  Essays  in  Historical  Criti 
cism  he  gave  the  student  and  general  reader  a  model  of  sound 
historical  analysis  and  showed  how  to  test  historical  statement 
in  a  practical  way.  Most  of  the  Essays  had  previously  been 
published  in  various  places.  The  most  notable  was  the  pa 
per  called  The  Legend  of  Marcus  Whitman,  which  was  received 
with  angry  protest  from  those  to  whom  the  legend  had  become 
dear. 

Four  Literary  Historians.  The  members  of  this  group  had 
something  to  do  with  Motley  and  Prescott  on  the  one  hand  and 
something  with  the  new  school  on  the  other;  but  they  were 
first  of  all  artists  in  expression,  working  in  the  field  of  history 
with  such  success  as  they  were  able  to  attain.  They  were  John 
Foster  Kirk  (1824-1904),  Francis  Parkman  (1823-93),  Edward 
Eggleston  (1837-1902),  and  John  Fiske  (1842-1901). 

Kirk  was  the  efficient  literary  secretary  of  William  H. 
Prescott1  during  the  latter  part  of  the  career  of  this  nearly 
blind  historian,  travelling  with  him  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic 
and  meeting  many  of  the  leading  men  of  the  day.  During  this 
period  he  began  to  write  for  The  North  American  Review  and 
other  magazines.  Prescott  and  his  friends  encouraged  his 
efforts,  and  after  the  death  of  his  employer  in  1859  he  embarked 
definitely  on  the  sea  of  authorship.  It  was  natural  for  him  to 
select  a  subject  in  Prescott's  field.  He  chose  the  career  of 
Charles  the  Bold,  founder  of  the  Burgundian  power  and  great 
grandfather  of  Charles  V.  It  was  a  subject  worthy  of  a  bril 
liant  pen,  and  his  book  The  Life  of  Charles  the  Bold  (3  vols., 
1863)  met  all  expectations.  While  it  rested  on  secondary 
authorities  and  has  been  rendered  obsolete  by  later  investiga 
tions,  it  was  worthy  to  rank  with  the  books  by  Robertson,  Pres 
cott,  and  Motley  which  had  already  made  the  Burgundian- 
Austrian  cycle  a  famous  period  in  historiography.  Vividness 
and  colour  were  its  notable  qualities.  The  great  expectations  it 
1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xvm. 


Francis  Parkman  189 

raised  were  doomed  to  disappointment ;  for  although  the  author 
lived  forty-one  years  after  its  publication,  his  Charles  the  Bold 
remains  his  one  important  book.  From  1870  to  1886  he  edited 
Lippincotfs  Magazine,  and  for  five  years  later  was  engaged  in 
preparing  a  supplement  to  Allibone's  Dictionary.  The  re 
mainder  of  his  life  was  given  to  a  new  dictionary  which  the 
Lippincott's  proposed  to  publish.  This  submergence  of  liter 
ary  talents  by  hack  work  brought  regret  to  many  who  knew 
Kirk's  talents.  When  Edward  A.  Freemen  was  introduced  to 
him  he  exclaimed:  "Why  did  you  stop?  I  looked  for  more 
books  on  European  history  from  you  and  have  been  much 
disappointed." 

Francis  Parkman  had  the  best  of  Boston's  inheritance  ex 
cept  health,  and  against  the  effects  of  that  handicap  he  inter 
posed  a  resolute  spirit  which  enabled  him  to  devote  to  his  books 
the  few  hours  he  could  snatch  from  a  constant  state  of  pain. 
From  early  life  he  had  the  desire  to  write  the  history  of  the 
New  England  border  wars.  During  his  college  vacations  he 
visited  the  scenes  of  these  conflicts,  and  he  read  always  widely 
in  the  books  on  that  subject.  When  he  graduated  at  Harvard 
in  1844  ne  knew  the  New  England  Indians  thoroughly.  Much 
of  the  next  two  years  was  spent  in  visiting  the  historic  spots  on 
the  Pennsylvania  border  and  in  the  region  beyond.  In  1846 
he  made  a  journey  to  the  land  of  the  Sioux,  where  he  spent 
some  weeks  in  the  camps  of  a  native  tribe,  studying  the  Indian 
in  the  savage  state.  His  experiences  were  described  in  a  series 
of  letters  in  The  Knickerbocker  Magazine  and  republished  in  his 
first  book,  The  California  and  Oregon  Trail  (1849),  still  con 
sidered  one  of  our  best  descriptions  of  Indian  life. 

Now  prepared  for  his  main  task,  Parkman  took  a  striking 
incident  of  Indian  history  and  wrote  on  it  his  Conspiracy  of 
Pontiac  (1851).  In  this  book  he  placed  much  introductory 
matter  on  the  Indians,  together  with  a  comprehensive  review 
of  the  history  of  the  French  settlements  before  1761,  when  the 
conspiracy  of  Pontiac  began.  From  this  large  use  of  prelimi 
nary  materials  it  would  seem  that  he  had  not  yet  determined  to 
undertake  the  series  of  volumes  in  which  he  later  treated  the 
same  period.  The  Pontiac  was  well  received  and  it  was  a  good 
book  from  a  young  author.  But  it  lacked  conciseness  and  was 
overdrawn. 


190  Later  Historians 

For  several  years  after  its  publication  Parkman  suffered 
great  physical  pain,  and  he  seemed  about  to  lose  the  use  of  his 
eyes  and  limbs.  But  he  never  gave  up  his  ambition  or  ceased 
to  collect  information  about  the  Indians.  In  this  interval  he 
wrote  Vassall  Morton  (1856),  a  novel  which  did  not  succeed. 
Turning  back  to  history  he  revised  his  entire  plan  and  outlined 
his  France  and  England  in  North  America.  The  series  was 
limited  to  the  period  before  the  Pontiac  war.  It  embraced 
the  whole  story  of  French  colonization  in  North  America  from 
the  Huguenot  colonies  of  the  sixteenth  century  to  the  fall  of 
Quebec.  The  various  parts  appeared  as  follows :  The  Pioneers 
of  France  in  the  New  World  (1865) ;  The  Jesuits  in  North  America 
(1867) ;  La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the  Great  West  (1869) ;  The 
Old  Regime  in  Canada  (1874) "»  Count  Frontenac  and  New  France 
under  Louis  XIV  (1877) ;  Montcalm  and  Wolfe  (2  vols.,  1884) ; 
and  A  Half  Century  of  Conflict  (2  vols. ,  1 892) .  He  described  the 
series  as  including  "the  whole  course  of  the  American  conflict 
between  France  and  England,  or  in  other  words,  the  history  of 
the  American  forest;  for  this  was  the  light  in  which  I  regarded 
it.  My  theme  fascinated  me,  and  I  was  haunted  with  wilder 
ness  images  day  and  night. ' '  Parkman's  purposes  were  wholly 
American.  He  loved  the  vast  recesses  of  murmuring  pines, 
with  their  tragedies,  adventures,  and  earnest  striving.  Pres- 
cott  and  Motley  might  paint  the  gorgeous  scenes  of  royal  courts 
and  Bancroft  might  interrupt  his  labours  in  writing  the  pane 
gyric  of  democracy  to  play  a  complacent  r61e  as  minister  at 
Berlin,  but  Parkman  never  ceased  to  find  his  chief  interest  in 
the  American  forest  and  its  denizens. 

His  avowed  method  of  writing  was  "while  scrupulously  and 
rigorously  adhering  to  the  truth  of  facts,  to  animate  them  with 
the  life  of  the  past,  and,  so  far  as  might  be,  clothe  the  skeleton 
with  flesh.  Faithfulness  to  the  truth  of  history  involves  far 
more  than  research,  however  patient  and  scrupulous,  into 
special  facts.  The  narrator  must  seek  to  imbue  himself  with 
the  life  and  spirit  of  the  time. ' '  Few  writers  have  achieved  their 
ideal  of  expression  as  well  as  he.  What  Cooper x  did  in  the  realm 
of  fiction  Parkman  did  with  even  better  fidelity  to  nature  in  the 
realm  of  history.  He  never  studied  in  the  seminar  school, 
but  he  understood  its  lessons  instinctively  and  made  them  his 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  vi. 


Edward  Eggleston  191 

own  without  loss  of  the  best  things  in  the  old  school — vigour, 
harmony,  and  colour. 

Edward  Eggleston  entered  history  through  the  door  of 
fiction. I  He  was  born  in  Indiana  of  the  Western  branch  of  a 
leading  Virginia  family,  had  scant  educational  opportunities, 
spent  several  years  as  an  itinerant  Methodist  minister,  became 
an  editor  in  Chicago  and  New  York,  and  in  1871  published  the 
widely  read  story  of  frontier  life,  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster. 
Two  years  later  he  retired  from  the  profession  of  editor,  and 
became  pastor  of  a  Brooklyn  Congregational  church,  with  the 
expressed  understanding  that  he  was  not  to  conform  to  specific 
dogmas.  Increasing  skepticism  made  him  give  up  this  position 
in  1879.  The  step  was  taken  after  internal  struggles  which  left 
him  in  a  state  of  nervous  prostration.  Rest  brought  restoration 
and  he  turned  to  history  as  a  serious  study.  Fiction  he  still 
followed  as  a  breadwinning  art,  but  from  1880  to  his  death  in 
1902  he  considered  himself  primarily  a  historian. 

Social  history  was  his  field.  What  his  Hoosier  stories  did 
for  the  Indiana  backwoods,  he  wished  his  histories  to  do  in 
simple  narrative  for  the  life  of  all  the  people.  To  his  brother 
he  described  his  plan  in  the  following  words: 

I  am  going  to  write  a  series  of  volumes  which  together  shall 
constitute  a  History  of  Life  in  the  United  States — not  a  history  of 
the  United  States,  bear  in  mind,  but  a  history  of  the  life  there,  the 
life  of  the  people,  the  sources  of  their  ideas  and  habits,  the  course 
of  their  development  from  beginnings.  These  beginnings  will  be 
carefully  studied  in  the  first  volume.  Beyond  that  my  plans  for 
the  ordering  of  the  material  are  not  fully  formed.  It  will  be  a 
work  designed  to  answer  the  questions  "  How?"  and  "Whence?" 
and  "Why?"  All  this  will  require  a  great  deal  of  research,  but  I 
stand  ready  to  give  ten  years  of  my  life  to  the  task,  if  necessary. 

Ten  years  allow  brief  space  to  write  such  a  history  for  a  man 
of  less  desultory  habits  of  work  than  Eggleston  had.  At  the 
end  of  twenty-two  years  he  had  finished  only  two  of  the  pro 
posed  volumes,  The  Beginners  of  a  Nation  (1897)  and  The 
Transit  of  Civilization  (1901).  They  carried  the  story  of 
colonial  life  to  the  year  1640.  Had  the  work  proceeded  on  the 
same  scale  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  would  have 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xi. 


i92  Later  Historians 

gone  to  forty  volumes.  Eggleston  had  undertaken  it  without 
realizing  its  greatness.  The  plan,  however,  was  worthily  made ; 
and  the  two  volumes  completed  deserve  more  esteem  than  they 
will  get  as  fragments  of  a  too  ambitious  dream  by  a  man  already 
old  when  he  dreamed.  They  are  characterized  by  accuracy, 
breadth  of  view,  and  great  charm  of  narration.  Eggleston  com 
bined  research  and  good  literary  style  as  truly  as  Parkman,  but 
he  worked  less  persistently  and  gauged  the  situation  less  wisely. 

There  was  a  time  when  John  Fiske  seemed  likely  to  pass 
into  our  literary  history  as  the  man  who  best  combined  the  vir- 
tures  of  the  new  and  old  schools.  Time  has  defeated  the  hope 
by  discovering  that  he  lacked  accuracy.  Nature  gave  him  two 
excellent  gifts,  the  art  of  writing  and  the  art  of  lecturing  as  few 
others  could  write  or  lecture.  Each  was  performed  with  great 
facility  and  in  the  use  of  each  he  surpassed  most  of  his  con 
temporaries.  In  early  life  he  became  an  evolutionist  and  was 
much  disliked  by  the  orthodox f  until  he  finally  appeared  in  the 
role  of  reconciler  of  evolution  and  religion.  As  the  leading 
defender  of  the  philosophy  of  Darwin  and  Spencer  in  the 
United  States  he  gained  a  wide  influence  and  wrote  constantly. T 
By  1885  the  battle  of  evolution  had  been  won  in  high  places 
and  Fiske  seems  to  have  had  no  desire  to  pursue  it  in  the  lower 
circles.  At  the  same  time  he  was  gradually  drifting  away  from 
Spencer,  through  attempting  to  bring  religion  into  the  scope  of 
his  philosophy.  After  1885  he  wrote  nothing  philosophical. 

In  the  same  year  he  published  American  Political  Ideals, 
a  short  sketch  of  our  political  history,  and  it  opened  a  new  field 
of  activity.  In  1879  he  had  given  six  lectures  on  "America's 
Place  in  History"  in  the  Old  South  Church,  Boston.  With  a 
fine  sense  of  the  picturesque,  he  selected  such  subjects  as  the 
old  sea  kings,  the  Spanish  and  French  explorers,  and  the  causes 
of  the  Revolution.  It  was  his  first  handling  of  historical  events 
and  the  result  was  a  revelation  to  himself.  His  own  words 
were:  "This  thing  takes  the  people,  you  see:  they  understand 
and  feel  it  all,  as  they  can't  when  I  lecture  on  abstract  things. " 
Other  lectures  followed  and  met  with  such  great  success  that 
he  fully  committed  himself  to  history. 

One  of  these  courses  was  on  the  period  following  the  Revolu 
tion  and  was  published  as  The  Critical  Period  of  American  His- 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xvn. 


John  Fiske  193 

lory  (1888);  another  saw  the  light  as  The  Beginnings  of  New 
England  (1889) ;  while  still  another  after  being  presented  many 
times  on  the  platform  was  published  as  The  American  Revolu 
tion  (2  vols.,  1891).  Before  these  volumes  appeared  he  had 
made  plans  for  a  series  to  cover  the  whole  period  of  Amer 
ican  history,  and  he  proposed  to  make  these  re-baked  lectures 
fit  into  the  scheme.  It  was  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  begin 
nings  and  he  accordingly  set  to  work  on  The  Discovery  of  America 
(2  vols.,  1892).  This  was  followed  by  Old  Virginia  and  her 
Neighbors  (2  vols.,  1897)  and  The  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies 
(2  vols.,  1899).  Another  instalment,  New  France  and  New 
England,  carrying  the  story  down  to  the  Revolution,  was  not 
published  until  1902,  the  year  after  Fiske  died.  A  group  of  lec 
tures  was  published  in  1900  in  a  fascinating  volume  called  The 
Mississippi  Valley  in  the  Civil  War.  He  wrote  two  text-books 
which  had  remarkable  success:  Civil  Government  in  the  United 
States  (1890)  and  A  History  of  the  United  States  for  Schools 
( 1 892) .  A  biography  of  his  friend  Edward  L.  Youmans  ( 1 892) , 
a  volume  called  A  Century  of  Science  and  Other  Essays  (1899), 
and  two  posthumous  works,  Essays,  Historical  and  Literary 
(1902)  and  How  the  United  States  Became  a  Nation  (1904),  com 
pleted  his  historical  works. 

It  has  been  said  that  Fiske  applied  the  principles  of  evolu 
tion  to  history,  and  he  asserted  that  such  was  his  purpose. 
But  a  brief  examination  of  his  books  is  enough  to  show  that  he 
was  the  historian  of  episodes  and  human  action.  It  is  the 
dramatic  rather  than  the  philosophical  that  occupies  his  atten 
tion.  In  preparing  to  write  he  read  many  books  and  out  of  his 
capacious  memory  he  wrote  with  feverish  haste.  Too  ready 
dependence  on  memory,  an  unwillingness  to  look  deeply  into 
minute  sources,  and  an  extreme  tendency  to  the  picturesque 
undermined  his  sense  of  accuracy.  None  of  the  other  men 
in  the  group  under  treatment  equalled  him  in  mere  power  of 
narration. 

Historians  of  the  Latest  Period. x  Of  the  men  in  this  group 
not  one  rejected  the  dogma  of  the  supremacy  of  accuracy,  but  in 

1  This  chapter  does  not  deal  with  living  historians,  even  though  it  is  neces 
sary,  in  carrying  out  such  a  policy,  to  omit  any  discussion  of  so  excellent  an 
historian  as  James  Ford  Rhodes. 

VOL.  Ill — 13 


J94  Later  Historians 

varying  degrees  they  cherished  the  notion  that  history  should 
have  literary  merits.  In  all  of  them  the  new  school  triumphed 
but  the  old  yielded  slowly.  It  was  only  with  Mahan  and  Henry 
Adams  that  style  became  an  unconscious  expression  of  clearly 
formed  ideas.  That  it  was  always  good  is  too  much  to  assert ; 
but  at  its  best  it  was  a  subordinate  part  of  the  historian's 
purpose.  The  men  of  this  group,  the  most  conspicuous  of  our 
recently  deceased  historians,  all  worked  in  constant  fear  of 
inaccuracies. 

Henry  Charles  Lea  (1825-1909)  may  be  placed  at  the  head 
of  the  group.  He  was  a  prosperous  Philadelphia  publisher, 
the  grandson  of  Mathew  Carey, x  the  publisher,  nephew  of  Henry 
C.  Carey,2  the  economist,  and  son  of  Isaac  Lea,  a  naturalist 
notable  in  his  day.  To  this  family  inheritance  add  a  general 
Quaker  background  and  we  may  understand  the  origin  of  his 
desire  to  describe  some  of  the  most  striking  phases  of  the  history 
of  religious  zeal.  In  two  book-reviews  published  in  1859  ne 
managed  to  introduce  a  great  deal  about  compurgation,  the 
wager  of  battle,  and  ordeals.  His  interest  in  the  subject  was  so 
much  aroused  that  he  subsequently  revised  the  essays  in  a  vol 
ume  called  Superstition  and  Force  (1866).  It  was  followed  by 
The  History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy  (1867)  and  Studies  in  Church 
History  (1869).  These  books  were  written  in  such  hours  as  he 
could  snatch  from  business.  Convinced  that  the  two  kinds  of 
labour  could  not  be  carried  on  jointly  with  perfect  success,  he 
gave  up  authorship  for  a  time.  In  1880  he  was  able  to  retire 
from  active  business  and  devote  himself  to  literature.  The 
books  written  in  this  second  period  are  richer  in  the  evidences 
of  research  and  broader  in  plan  and  judgment.  They  are 
The  History  of  the  Inquisition  in  the  Middle  Ages  (3  vols.,  1888), 
Chapters  from  the  Religious  History  of  Spain  Connected  with  the 
Inquisition  (1890),  History  of  Auricular  Confession  (3  vols., 
1896),  The  Moriscoes  in  Spain  (1901),  History  of  the  Inquisition 
in  Spain  (4  vols.,  1906-1908),  and  History  of  the  Inquisition  in 
the  Spanish  Dependencies  (1908).  When  Lea  died  he  was 
preparing  a  history  of  witchcraft. 

These  works  are  monuments  of  industry  and  learning,  and 
they  deal  with  a  most  difficult  class  of  phenomena  in  a  scientific 
spirit.  They  have  encountered  the  opposition  of  most  Catholic 

'  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xxix.  *  Ibid.,  Chap.  xxiv. 


Henry  Charles  Lea;  Hubert  Howe  Bancroft 

writers,  but  some,  notably  Lord  Acton,  have  given  them  their 
approval.  Lea  did  not  hesitate  to  lay  evils  at  the  doors  to 
which  he  thought  they  belonged.  ' '  I  have  always  sought, ' '  he 
said  ' l  even  though  infinitesimally,  to  contribute  to  the  better 
ment  of  the  world,  by  indicating  the  consequences  of  evil  and  of 
inconsiderate  and  misdirected  zeal. ' '  He  was  accused  of  inter 
preting  his  documents  improperly  and  of  showing  only  the  dark 
side  of  the  mediaeval  church.  As  to  the  first  point  it  is  difficult 
to  find  a  man  who  can  pass  upon  its  truth.  Lea  himself  was, 
perhaps,  the  fairest  critic  in  the  field.  That  he  was  not  nar 
rowly  prejudiced  is  shown  by  his  treatment  of  the  motives  of 
Philip  II  in  his  inaugural  address  as  president  of  the  American 
Historical  Association.  As  to  the  second  charge,  we  should 
remember  that  Lea  did  not  propose  to  write  about  the  light 
sides  of  the  church.  He  was  dealing  with  a  dark  phase  of  his 
tory,  and  he  did  not  try  to  make  it  lighter  than  he  thought  it 
should  be  made. 

Another  publisher  who  became  a  historian  was  Hubert  Howe 
Bancroft  (1832-1918),  of  San  Francisco,  who  gave  us  our  most 
conspicuous  group  of  local  histories.  Having  formed  a  large 
collection  of  materials  on  the  history  of  the  Pacific  coast,  he 
decided  to  embody  the  contents  in  a  comprehensive  work.  He 
adopted  the  method  of  the  business  man  who  has  a  task  too  large 
for  his  own  efforts.  He  employed  assistants  to  prepare  state 
ments  of  the  facts  for  large  sections  of  the  proposed  history. 
Originally  he  seems  to  have  intended  to  use  these  statements  as 
the  basis  of  a  narrative  from  his  own  hand ;  but  as  the  work  pro 
gressed  he  came  to  use  them  with  slight  changes.  We  have  his 
own  word  that  the  assistants  were  capable  investigators  and 
there  is  independent  evidence  to  show  that  some  of  them  de 
served  his  confidence.  But  his  failure  to  give  credit  leaves 
us  in  a  state  of  doubt  concerning  the  value  of  any  particular 
part.  Bancroft  considered  himself  the  author  of  the  work. 
We  must  look  upon  him  as  the  director  of  a  useful  enterprise, 
but  it  is  not  possible  to  consider  him  its  author. 

His  Works  contain  thirty-nine  large  volumes  with  the  fol 
lowing  titles :  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States  (vols.  1-5,  1874), 
History  of  Central  America  (vols.  6-8,  1883-87),  History  of 
Mexico  (vols.  9-14,  1883-87),  History  of  the  Northern  Mexican 
States  and  Texas  (vols.  15-16,  1884-89),  History  of  Arizona 


Later  Historians 


and  New  Mexico  (vol.  17,  1889),  History  of  California  (vols. 
18-24,  1884-90),  History  of  Nevada,  Colorado,  and  Wyoming 
(vol.  25,  1890),  History  of  Utah  (vol.  26,  1889),  History  of  the 
North-West  Coast  (vols.  27-28,  1884),  History  of  Oregon  (vols. 
29-30,  1886-88),  History  of  Washington,  Idaho,  and  Montana 
(vol.  31,  1890),  History  of  British  Columbia  (vol.  32,  1887), 
History  of  Alaska  (vol.  33,  1886),  Calif  ornia  Pastorals  (vol.34, 
1888),  California  inter  Pocula  (vol.  35,  1888),  Popular  Tribunals 
(vols.  36-37,  1887),  ^Essays  and  Miscellany  (vol.  38,  1890), 
and  Literary  Industries  (vol.  39,  1890). 

Neither  Bancroft  nor  his  assistants  had  the  preliminary 
training  to  save  them  from  the  ordinary  pitfalls  along  the  path 
of  the  scholar.  They  carried  to  their  tasks  uncritical  enthus 
iasms  and  made  good  books  which,  nevertheless,  had  some 
serious  defects.  In  a  period  when  the  reviewer  generally  ap 
praised  a  book  for  its  style  Bancroft's  early  volumes  generally 
received  approbation.  Francis  Parkman  himself  gave  The 
Native  Races  high  credit  in  The  North  American  Review.  But 
the  work  did  not  escape  the  eyes  of  Lewis  H.  Morgan,  whose 
revolutionary  theory  of  Indian  culture  was  then  new  to  the 
world.  In  an  article  called  "Montezuma's  Dinner"  Morgan 
completely  reversed  Parkman's  verdict  and  implanted  a  doubt 
in  the  minds  of  the  intelligent  public  which  extended  to  other 
volumes  of  the  series.  Bancroft's  comments  on  Morgan's 
criticism  suggest  that  he  did  not  understand  Morgan's  theory, 
now  generally  accepted  by  scholars. 

Alfred  Thayer  Mahan  (1840-1914)  graduated  at  the  Naval 
Academy  at  Annapolis  in  1859,  served  the  usual  course  at  sea, 
and  was  ordered  to  duty  at  the  Naval  War  College  shortly 
after  it  was  established  in  1885.  A  course  of  lectures  prepared 
for  that  service  was  the  basis  of  a  book,  The  Influence  of  Sea 
Power  in  History,  1660-1783  (1890),  which  established  his 
reputation  as  an  historian.  Following  the  same  idea  he  pub 
lished  Influence  of  Sea  Power  on  the  French  Revolution  (1892), 
Life  of  Far  r  a  gut  (  1  892)  ,  The  Life  of  Nelson,  the  Embodiment  of  the 
Sea  Power  of  Great  Britain  (2  vols.,  1897),  Sea  Power  in  its  Re 
lation  to  the  War  of  1812  (1905),  and  From  Sail  to  Steam  (1907), 
the  last  a  book  relating  to  his  own  career.  In  his  later  years 
he  wrote,  also,  many  articles  for  the  magazines,  and  out  of  them 
were  formed  several  volumes  of  essays. 


Alfred  Thayer  Mahan  197 

Rear-Admiral  Mahan  is  the  best  example  we  have  had  in 
the  United  States  of  a  man  who  wrote  history  successfully  for 
propaganda.  He  wished  to  show  that  a  nation  that  would 
play  a  large  role  in  the  world  must  have  a  great  navy.  He  won 
immediate  fame  in  Great  Britain,  where  his  books  served  to 
strengthen  the  naval  policy  of  the  government.  They  were 
also  greatly  appreciated  in  Germany,  and  it  is  said  that  they 
opened  the  eyes  of  the  German  government  to  the  need  of  a 
great  navy.  In  his  own  country  he  was  highly  esteemed  as  an 
historian,  but  he  never  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the  gov 
ernment  adopt  a  great  naval  policy. 

While  Mahan  was  a  scholarly  historian,  he  cannot  be  pro 
nounced  a  man  of  research.  With  a  thesis  to  prove  it  was  not 
necessary  to  go  to  the  sources  to  prove  it.  His  early  books  were 
written  entirely  from  secondary  materials ;  but  he  used  sources 
in  his  later  work,  particularly  in  the  book  on  the  War  of  1812, 
of  which  he  said :  "  It  is  by  far  the  most  thorough  work  I  have 
done.  "  Something  of  his  mental  character  may  be  seen  in  the 
following  statement  in  reference  to  a  book  which  most  students 
find  uninteresting:  " Though  not  a  lawyer,  nor  a  student  of 
constitutions,  I  found  Stubbs's  Constitutional  History  of  Eng 
land  fascinating.  I  have  not  analyzed  my  pleasure,  but  I  be 
lieve  it  to  have  been  due  to  arrangement  of  data  by  a  man 
exceptionally  gifted  for  vivid  presentation,  who  had  so  lived 
with  his  subject  that  it  had  realized  itself  to  him  as  a  living 
whole,  which  he  successfully  conveyed  to  his  readers. " 

Three  sons  of  Charles  Francis  Adams,  grandsons  of  John 
Quincy  Adams,  became  historians,  and  two  of  them,  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  Jr.  (1835-1915)  and  Henry  Adams  (1838- 
1918),  fall  within  the  limits  assigned  to  this  chapter.  Both 
of  them  had  the  Puritan  mind,  so  strong  in  their  ancestry,  as 
well  as  that  independent  Adams  spirit  which  put  the  family, 
from  John  Adams  to  Henry,  out  of  touch  with  the  dominant 
thought  of  Boston.  Turning  to  history,  both  of  them  became 
able  critics  of  conventional  views  and  won  high  respect  from 
an  age  turning  towards  cosmopolitan  ideals.  The  elder  of 
the  two,  however,  did  not  go  all  the  way  in  revolt.  New 
Englander  he  remained  to  the  last.  He  loved  Boston,  although 
he  rapped  its  knuckles  at  times,  and  he  sought  to  reform  its 
intellectual  life.  The  younger  clung  to  Boston  for  many  years, 


Later  Historians 


giving  himself  to  a  phase  of  our  history  in  which  the  town  had  a 
deep  interest  ;  but  finally,  having  reached  a  stage  of  disillusion 
ment,  as  he  considered  it,  he  broke  local  ties,  turned  toward 
the  unanchored  spaces  of  the  remote  past,  and  became  a  master 
in  the  realm  of  detached  thinking. 

After  serving  in  the  army  until  1865  Charles  Francis  Adams, 
Jr.,  gave  himself  to  the  study  of  the  railroad  situation,  writing 
and  publishing  articles  that  led  to  his  appointment  on  the 
Massachusetts  railroad  commission  in  1869.  In  the  same  year 
he  published  a  remarkable  essay,  A  Chapter  in  Erie,  exposing 
the  methods  by  which  some  of  the  leading  railroad  directors 
manipulated  the  stocks  of  their  roads  for  their  own  benefit.  He 
became  a  government  director  of  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad  in 
1882  and  served  as  its  president  from  1884  to  1890.  Retiring 
from  this  position  he  gave  the  remainder  of  his  life  to  history. 
The  results  of  his  labours  appeared  in  many  books  and  pam 
phlets,  the  most  important  of  which  were  Chapters  of  Erie  and 
Other  Essays  —  in  collaboration  with  Henry  Adams  —  (1871), 
Railroads,  their  Origin  and  Problems  (1878),  Notes  on  Railroad 
Accidents  (1879),  The  New  English  Canaan  of  Thomas  Morton 
(new  edition  with  introduction,  1883),  Richard  Henry  Dana,  a 
Biography  (2  vols.,  1890),  History  of  Quincy  (1891),  History  of 
Braintree  (1891),  Three  Episodes  of  Massachusetts  History  (2 
vols.,  1892),  Massachusetts,  its  Historians  and  History  (1893), 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  the  First  (1900),  Three  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Addresses  (1907),  Studies,  Military  and  Diplomatic  (1911), 
Trans-Atlantic  Historical  Solidarity  (1913),  and  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  an  Autobiography  (1916). 

He  was  not  content  to  be  merely  an  historian  but  did  many 
things  to  promote  historical  interests.  He  was  in  constant 
demand  for  historical  addresses.  Several  of  his  discourses  were 
made  in  the  South,  where  his  appreciation  of  Southern  character 
was  warmly  received,  and  his  words  did  much  to  promote  good 
feeling  between  the  two  sections.  As  vice-president  and  presi 
dent  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  he  was  the  leader 
of  an  important  group  of  historians.  It  was  in  these  extra- 
literary  activities  that  he  served  history  best. 

The  historical  career  of  Henry  Adams  falls  into  two  periods. 
One  of  them  began  with  his  return  from  London  in  1868,  where 
he  had  been  private  secretary  to  his  father,  then  minister  to 


Henry  Adams  199 

Great  Britain,  and  continued  until  1892,  when  he  turned  his 
back  on  all  he  had  been  doing  and  began  again  what  he  termed 
his  " education."  The  second  extended  from  that  change  of 
purpose  to  his  death.  The  editorship  of  The  North  American 
Review  (1869-76)  and  an  assistant-professorship  in  history  at 
Harvard  (1870-77)  ushered  in  the  first  period.  Teaching  did 
not  suit  him  and  he  resigned  because  he  felt  that  his  efforts  were 
failures.  His  mind  was  too  original  to  go  through  life  in  the 
routine  of  college  instruction.  He  now  turned  to  American 
history,  producing  by  much  industry  in  fourteen  years  the 
following  books :  Documents  Relating  to  New  England  Federalism 
(1877)  Lif 'e  °f  Albert  Gallatin  (1879),  Writings  of  Albert  Gallatin 
(1879),  John  Randolph  (1882),  History  of  the  United  States 
during  the  Administrations  of  Jefferson  and  Madison  (9  vols., 
1889-91),  and  Historical  Essays  (1891).  The  best  scholarship 
and  excellent  literary  form  characterize  all  these  books.  No 
better  historical  work  has  been  done  in  this  country.  Yet 
the  books  were  little  read  and  the  author  became  discouraged. 
He  concluded  that  what  he  had  been  doing  was  without  value  to 
the  world,  since  it  was  not  noticed  by  the  world. 

Then  began  the  second  period  of  his  literary  life.  Settling 
down  to  a  quiet  life  of  study,  and  following  his  taste,  he  delved 
long  and  patiently  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The  result  appeared  in 
Mont  Saint  Michel  and  Chartres  (1904,  1913),  probably  the  best 
expression  of  the  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages  yet  published  in  the 
English  language.  It  was  followed  by  Essays  in  Anglo-Saxon 
Law  (1905),  The  Education  of  Henry  Adams  (1906,  1918),  A 
Letter  to  American  Teachers  of  History  (1910),  and  Life  of 
George  Cabot  (1911).  Two  of  these  books,  the  Mont  Saint 
Michel  and  the  Education,  deserve  to  rank  among  the  best 
American  books  that  have  yet  been  written.  The  first  is  a 
model  of  literary  construction  and  a  fine  illustration  of  how  a 
skilled  writer  may  use  the  history  of  a  small  piece  of  activity 
as  a  means  of  interpreting  a  great  phase  of  human  life.  Through 
the  Education  runs  a  note  of  futility,  not  entirely  counter 
balanced  by  the  brilliant  character-sketching  and  wise  observa 
tions  upon  the  times.  But  the  Mont  Saint  Michel  redeems  this 
fault.  It  shows  us  Henry  Adams  at  his  best,  and  under  its 
charm  we  are  prepared  to  overlook  the  aloofness  which  limited 
his  interests  while  it  depressed  his  spirits. 


200  Later  Historians 

In  the  Education  Henry  Adams  defined  history  in  these 
words :  ' '  To  historians  the  single  interest  is  the  law  of  reaction 
between  force  and  force — between  mind  and  nature — the  law 
of  progress."  He  thus  announced  in  his  maturity  his  alle 
giance  to  the  most  modern  concept  of  history.  In  his  early  his 
torical  writings  he  dealt  with  the  relations  of  men  with  men, 
as  Parkman,  Lea,  Mahan,  and  many  others  dealt.  In  his 
revised  opinions  he  conceived  that  the  story  of  man's  progress 
as  affected  by  natural  forces  was  the  true  task  of  the  historian. 
It  is  a  concept  to  which  the  best  modern  thinkers  have  been 
slowly  moving.  Adams  grasped  it  with  the  greatest  boldness 
and  in  the  Mont  Saint  Michel  gave  future  historians  an  example 
of  how  to  realize  it  in  actual  literature. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Later  Theology 

AMERICAN  theology  since  the  Civil  War  represents  an 
age  of  transition,  of  much  fortunate  silence,  of  expect 
ant  waiting,  as  on  a  threshold.  But  there  are  one  or 
two  sturdy  souls,  like  William  G.  T.  Shedd  (1820-94)  and 
Charles  Hodge  (1797-1878),  who  gathered  up  the  olden  time 
with  a  disdain  of  the  new.  Yet  perhaps  disdain  is  scarcely  the 
word  to  associate  with  Charles  Hodge.  His  three  huge  volumes 
on  Systematic  Theology  (1873)  are  found  now  mostly  in  public 
libraries  and  in  the  attic  chambers  of  aging  parsons.  Theology 
is  out  of  vogue,  and  his  volumes  represent  a  system  which  is  less 
and  less  widely  held  as  the  years  go  by.  But  Charles  Hodge  had 
a  genuine  religious  experience.  Disdain  certainly  fades  from 
the  lips  of  any  tolerant  modern  man  as  he  browses  in  these 
books.  The  table  of  contents  is  schematical,  wooden.  The  first 
volume,  after  an  introduction,  deals  with  "Theology  Proper," 
the  second  volume  is  devoted  to  "Anthropology,"  and  the 
third  is  divided  between  ' '  Soteriology  "  and  ' '  Eschatology. " 
But  though  "Evolution"  is  in  the  air — and  indeed  in  the  first 
volume — there  is  no  apologetic  explanation  of  the  division. 
Hodge  is  not  ashamed  of  the  tenets  of  past  ages.  He  does  not 
write  for  the  public  but  to  the  public.  But  he  writes  with 
transparent  sincerity.  There  is  no  evasion.  There  is  neither 
condescension  nor  cringing.  There  is  nothing  left  at  loose  ends. 
There  is  no  sparing  of  thought.  His  weighty  opponents  are 
fairly  treated  and  his  words  are  devoid  of  sarcasm — the  weapon 
of  conscious  and  obtrusive  superiority.  He  does  not  pretend 
to  understand  God  nor  those  who  seem  to  him  to  claim  that 
they  do.  He  only  claims  to  apprehend  the  Word  of  God.  In 
his  introduction  he  reaches,  on  what  he  regards  as  rational 

201 


202  Later  Theology 

grounds,  the  conclusion  that  the  Scriptures  are  the  Word  of 
God  and  therefore  that  their  teachings  are  infallible.  Thereon 
he  stands  unmoved.  Approaching  the  profound  subject  of  the 
decrees  of  God,  for  every  Calvinist  thrilling  in  its  audacity,  he 
says  simply: 

It  must  be  remembered  that  theology  is  not  philosophy.  It  does 
not  assume  to  discover  truth,  or  to  reconcile  what  it  teaches  as  true 
with  all  other  truths.  Its  province  is  simply  to  state  what  God  has 
revealed  in  His  Word  and  to  vindicate  those  statements,  as  far  as 
possible,  from  misconceptions  and  objections.  This  limited  and 
humble  office  of  theology  it  is  especially  necessary  to  bear  in  mind, 
when  we  come  to  speak  of  the  acts  and  purposes  of  God.  All  that  is 
proposed  is  simply  to  state  what  the  Spirit  has  seen  fit  to  reveal  on 
that  subject. 

So  he  looks  without  flinching  over  the  vast  unsunned  spaces 
to  the  place  of  eternal  punishment.  On  the  "Duration  of 
Future  Punishment"  he  writes: 

It  is  obvious  that  this  is  a  question  which  can  be  decided  only  by 
divine  revelation.  No  one  can  reasonably  presume  to  decide  how 
long  the  wicked  are  to  suffer  for  their  sins  upon  any  general  princi 
ples  of  right  and  wrong.  The  conditions  of  the  problem  are  not 
within  our  grasp.  What  the  infinitely  wise  and  good  God  may  see 
fit  to  do  with  His  creatures,  or  what  the  exigencies  of  a  government, 
embracing  the  whole  universe  and  continuing  throughout  eternal 
ages,  may  demand,  it  is  not  for  such  worms  of  the  dust,  as  we  are,  to 
determine.  If  we  believe  the  Bible  to  be  the  Word  of  God,  all  we 
have  to  do  is  to  ascertain  what  it  teaches  on  this  subject,  and  humbly 
submit.  ...  It  should  constrain  us  to  humility  and  to  silence  on 
this  subject  that  the  most  solemn  and  explicit  declarations  of  the 
everlasting  misery  of  the  wicked  recorded  in  the  Scriptures,  fell  from 
the  lips  of  Him,  who,  though  equal  with  God,  was  found  in  fashion 
as  a  man,  and  humbled  Himself  unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the 
cross,  for  us  men  and  our  salvation. 

There  is  a  strange  sublimity  and  extraordinary  perspicuity 
about  the  style  of  Charles  Hodge.  It  is  not  style  at  all.  He 
is  writing  a  treatise  for  students.  His  sentences  are  con 
stantly  interrupted  by  i)  2)  3),  A)  B)  C),  and  the  like.  Yet, 
notwithstanding  the  nature  of  the  doctrine  and  the  ponderous 


The  Question  of  Authority  203 

character  of  the  subject,  there  are  few  books  which  open  the 
mind  on  the  fields  of  grandeur  more  frequently  than  this  sys 
tematic  theology.  Its  prose  is  not  unworthy  of  being  associ 
ated  in  one's  mind  with  that  of  Milton.  Out  of  the  depths  this 
man  has  cried  unto  God  and  found  Him. 

But,  undeniably,  theology  has  gone  out  of  fashion.  Huge 
treatises  like  those  of  Hodge  or  Shedd  or  Augustus  Strong  never 
found  many  readers,  but  they  found  their  way  to  many  book 
shelves.  They  were  treated  with  reverence.  Now  they  are 
utterly  ignored.  The  chief  reason  for  this  contempt  of  the 
ology  is  that  men  impugn  its  ancient  authority.  Hodge  rightly 
declared  that  theology  was  to  be  differentiated  from  philosophy 
by  its  source  of  authority.  It  dealt  with  revelation  while 
philosophy  dealt  with  speculation.  Its  function  was  the 
interpretation  of  absolute  truth,  committed  to  men  by  the 
Holy  Ghost  through  the  pages  of  the  Scripture.  In  our  period 
this  supposedly  infallible  book  was  subjected  to  the  most 
searching  examination.  The  ordinary  canons  of  historical 
and  literary  criticism  were  applied  to  it  and  as  a  result  the 
awesome  phrase  "Thus  saith  the  Lord"  came  to  bear  diverse 
connotations.  It  was  in  the  eighties  and  nineties  that  the 
authority  of  the  Scripture,  already  long  questioned  in  Europe, 
became  a  vital  question  in  American  thought.  Then  a  series 
of  heresy  trials — five  within  the  Presbyterian  Church — con 
centrated  the  attention  of  religious  people  upon  the  subject. 
The  most  prominent  figure  in  the  great  controversy  in  America 
was  Charles  Augustus  Briggs  (1841-1913),  professor  in  Union 
Theological  Seminary  in  New  York  from  1874  to  1913.  This 
controversy  was  preceded  by  a  bitter  controversy  in  the  an 
cient  Congregational  Seminary  at  Andover,  Massachusetts, 
on  questions  of  the  future  state,  into  which  Briggs  also  entered. 
But  the  main  question  was  the  nature  of  Biblical  inspira 
tion.  After  a  defence  conducted  by  himself  with  great  skill 
and  acumen,  he  was  acquitted  of  the  charges  of  heresy 
by  his  Presbytery  in  January,  1893,  but  upon  appeal  to  the 
General  Assembly  was  convicted  and  suspended  from  the 
ministry  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  March  of  the  same 
year. 

Apart  from  some  minor  peculiarities  of  personal  temper,  no 
one  could  well  have  been  found  better  able  than  Briggs  to  com- 


2<>4  Later  Theology 

mend  the  newer  views  on  the  Scriptures  to  the  conservative 
circles  of  America  and  particularly  to  the  members  of  the  Presby 
terian  Church  who  occupied  so  large  a  place  in  the  educational 
life  of  the  country.  He  was  the  leading  authority  on  the  history 
of  the  Westminster  Assembly  which  framed  the  Presbyterian 
standards.  In  his  treatise  Whither  (1889)  he  is  at  great  pains 
to  show  that  the  doctrine  of  inerrancy  of  Scripture  is  a  modern 
development  of  orthodox  opinion,  and  that  it  was  with  careful 
forethought  that  the  Assembly  refrained  from  committing 
itself  and  the  Church  to  any  specific  doctrine  of  inspiration  or 
to  the  statement  that  the  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God.  It  had 
proclaimed  indeed  that  the  Bible  was  the  only  infallible  rule  of 
faith  and  practice  but  refused  to  extend  its  authority  beyond 
the  moral  and  religious  sphere.  "The  Church  ought  to  be  in 
advance  of  the  Confession.  But  the  Confession  is  in  advance 
of  the  Church  so  that  the  children  of  the  Puritans  must  first  ad 
vance  to  the  high  mark  of  their  own  standards  before  they  can 
go  beyond  them  into  the  higher  reaches  of  Christian  theology. ' ' ' 
His  own  temper  was  conservative  in  a  very  high  degree.  He  re 
joiced  that  he  was  essentially  at  one  with  historic  Christendom. 
At  the  end  of  his  life  he  occupied  the  chair  of  Irenics  at  the 
Seminary  which  proved  so  loyal  to  him,  and  as  a  priest  in  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church  gave  much  of  his  energy  to  the  re 
union  of  Christendom.  Moreover,  the  field  upon  which  he  chiefly 
laboured  in  his  six  student  years  in  Germany  and  in  the  Seminary 
was  the  Old  Testament.  And  although  he  frankly  admitted 
that  "in  every  department  of  Biblical  study  we  come  upon 
errors, ' '  it  was  with  questions  of  Old  Testament  literature  that 
he  was  primarily  concerned.  The  application  of  the  canons  of 
criticism  to  the  New  Testament  was  fortunately  deferred.  The 
figure  of  Jesus,  indeed,  was  first  brought  into  the  realm  of  criti 
cism  in  America  by  his  utterances  in  regard  to  the  Old  Testament 
books  which  were  under  discussion.  The  Bible  was  discovered 
by  the  American  public  to  be  literature  by  way  of  the  Old 
Testament.  It  was,  however,  no  literary  interest  which  im 
pelled  the  discovery,  but  rather  the  deepest  loyalty  to  religious 
truth.  With  the  same  fearless  loyalty  to  fact  with  which 
Hodge  faced  hell,  did  Briggs  and  his  fellows  descry  errors  in  a 
book  which  they  held  to  be  the  repository  of  eternal  truth. 

1  Whither,  p.  296. 


Inspiration  205 

To  claim  beforehand  that  inspiration  or  any  such  divine  process 
must  be  this  or  that,  that  it  must  have  certain  characteristics,  is  to 
venture  beyond  our  limits.  In  all  humility,  instead  of  dictating 
what  God  should  do,  let  us  inquire  reverently  what  God  has  done, — 
in  what  form  concretely  the  revelation  of  His  will  has  come  to  men. 
All  a  priori  definition  of  inspiration  is  not  only  unscientific  but 
irreverent,  presumptuous,  lacking  in  the  humility  with  which  we 
should  approach  a  divine,  supernatural  fact. 

So  speaks  another  who  later  was  the  object  of  heresy 
proceedings  in  the  Presbyterian  Church,  Professor  Llewelyn 
J.  Evans  of  Lane  Theological  Seminary  in  Cincinnati. T 

Now  although  the  discovery  of  errors  in  Scripture,  of 
pseudepigraphs  in  the  Old  Testament,  of  unfulfillable  pro 
phecies, — the  asseveration  of  which  occupied  so  prominent  a 
place  in  the  trial  of  Briggs, — of  authors  separated  by  centuries 
within  the  confines  of  the  Pentateuch  alone,  of  false  ascriptions 
of  late  laws  to  the  holy  but  dimming  figure  of  Moses,  have 
undoubtedly  helped  us  to  regard  the  Bible  as  primarily  a  pro 
duct  of  human  literary  and  religious  genius,  they  have  also 
gradually  changed  both  the  conception  of  the  place  of  the 
Bible  in  our  religion  and  of  our  religion  itself.  We  find  these 
changes  emerging  even  in  the  pages  of  Briggs. 

If  a  man  use  it  [the  Bible]  as  a  means  of  grace,  it  is  of  small 
importance  what  he  may  think  of  its  inspiration.  If  it  bring  him 
to  the  presence  of  the  living  God  and  give  him  a  personal  acquaint 
ance  with  Jesus  Christ,  that  is  its  main  purpose.  .  .  .  They  [the 
Scriptural  errors]  intimate  that  the  authority  of  God  and  His 
gracious  discipline  transcend  the  highest  possibilities  of  human 
speech  or  human  writing,  and  that  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  is  not 
only  the  religion  of  the  Bible,  but  the  religion  of  personal  com 
munion  with  the  living  God.2 

The  beginning  at  least  of  the  profound  change  in  a  man's 
religion  which  comes  about  through  the  change  in  his  religious 
authority  is  delicately  portrayed  by  Prof  essor  William  N.  Clarke 
(1841-1912)  of  Colgate  College.  Professor  Clarke's  theological 
books  have  been  the  most  popular  attempt  of  our  period  to  pre- 

1  See  his  Biblical  Scholarship  and  Inspiration,  1891,  pp.  12,  13,  20. 

2  The  Bible,  Church  and  Reason,  1892,  pp.  82,  117. 


Later  Theology 

serve  in  systematic  form  the  essentials  of  historic  Christianity 
without  inhospitality  to  modern  science  and  criticism.  In  his 
Sixty  Years  with  the  Bible  (1909)  he  writes: 

I  have  described  the  change  by  saying  that  I  passed  on  from  using 
the  Bible  in  the  light  of  its  statements  to  using  it  in  the  light  of  its 
principles.  At  first  I  said,  The  Scriptures  limit  me  to  this;  later  I 
said,  The  Scriptures  open  my  way  to  this.  As  for  the  Bible,  I  am 
not  bound  to  work  all  its  statements  into  my  system;  nay,  I  am 
bound  not  to  work  them  all  in;  for  some  of  them  are  not  congenial 
to  the  spirit  of  Jesus  and  some  express  truths  in  forms  which  cannot 
be  of  permanent  validity. 

Popular  interest  in  the  authority  of  the  Bible  was  prepared 
for  by  the  appearance  of  the  Revised  Version  of  the  Bible  just  a 
decade  before  the  dramatic  trial  of  Charles  A.  Briggs.  Thirty- 
four  of  the  leading  Hebrew  and  Greek  scholars  of  America 
united  with  sixty-seven  Englishmen  in  this  great  undertaking, 
which  Philip  Schaff,  the  chairman  of  the  American  revisers, 
declared  to  be  "  the  noblest  monument  of  Christian  union  and 
co-operation  in  this  nineteenth  century. ' '  After  a  laborious 
toil  of  eight  years,  during  which  "no  sectarian  question  was 
ever  raised,''  the  New  Testament  was  given  to  the  public. 
"The  rapidity  and  extent  of  its  sale  surpassed  all  expectations 
and  are  without  a  parallel  in  the  history  of  the  book- trade. " 
The  New  Testament  appeared  in  1881  and  the  Old  Testament 
in  1885.  Although  one  of  the  Old  Testament  revisers  took 
pains  to  say  in  his  Companion  to  the  Revised  Old  Testament  that 
"they  have  no  fellowship  with  that  disposition  which  of  late 
years  has  appeared  among  some  who  profess  and  call  them 
selves  Christians  to  speak  lightly  of  the  Scriptures  as  a  partial 
and  imperfect  record  of  revelation,"  and  although  the  Old 
Testament  Committee  was  presided  over  by  Professor  Wm.  H. 
Green  of  Princeton  Seminary  and  the  New  Testament  Com 
mittee  by  ex-President  Theodore  D.  Woolsey  of  Yale  College, 
both  eminently  conservative  scholars,  the  mere  publication  of  a 
new  translation  of  the  Scriptures,  founded  upon  a  revised  He 
brew  and  Greek  text,  prepared  the  public  mind  for  some  modi 
fication  of  the  concept  of  infallibility  which  had  possessed  it 
hitherto.  The  printing  of  the  Bible  in  paragraphs  like  other 
books — instead  of  in  the  oracular  verses — and  the  appearance 


Higher  Criticism  207 

of  portions  of  the  Old  Testament  in  poetic  form  helped  greatly  in 
convincing  the  plain  people  of  the  country  that  the  Bible  was  to 
be  subsumed  under  the  genus  literature  rather  than  kept  as  a 
sacred  oracle  in  mysterious  isolation. 

Nor  did  the  fact  that  the  most  brilliant  attacks  upon  the 
infallibility  of  the  Bible  and  many  of  its  ablest  defences  origin 
ated  in  Germany  militate  against  the  progress  of  the  newer 
thought  in  America  as  much  as  might  have  been  expected. 
Our  scholars  felt  themselves  dependent  upon  European  thought. 
Providentially,  too,  German  theological  scholarship  had  been 
introduced  to  American  minds  by  the  presence  and  fecundity 
of  Philip  Schaff  (1819-93),  a  man  of  most  conservative  temper, 
who,  in  an  amazing  number  of  volumes,  chiefly  in  the  domain 
of  Church  History,  had  commended  the  thoroughness  and 
sanity  of  German  research  to  the  American  public  from  his 
chair  in  Wittenberg,  Pennsylvania,  and  later  in  Union  Theo 
logical  Seminary,  New  York. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  during  the  period  under  consideration 
American  scholarship  contributed  anything  of  material  value 
to  the  higher  criticism  of  the  Bible.  It  has  to  its  credit  the 
great  New  Testament  Lexicon  (1893)  of  Professor  J.  Henry 
Thayer  of  Andover  Seminary  and  the  equally  pre-eminent  He 
brew  Lexicon  (1891)  edited  by  President  Francis  Brown  of  Union 
Seminary,  assisted  by  Professor  Briggs  of  Union  and  Professor 
Driver  of  Oxford.  But  in  the  higher  discipline  its  work  was 
of  a  more  mediating  and  imitative  character.  Few  of  our 
leading  scholars  took  an  unyielding  attitude  to  the  spirit  of 
the  times.  Manfully  and  with  unassuming  temper,  Green 
of  Princeton  defended  the  ancient  opinions  in  a  debate  with 
President  Harper  of  the  University  of  Chicago  and  later  in  his 
books,  The  Higher  Criticism  of  the  Pentateuch  (1895),  The 
Unity  of  the  Book  of  Genesis  (1895),  and  General  Introduction  to 
the  Old  Testament  (1898).  With  the  exception  of  more  search 
ing  work  by  still  living  scholars,  still  fewer  of  our  writers  took 
radical  ground.  Here  we  may  mention  only  the  lucid  books 
of  Orello  Cone  of  St.  Lawrence  University,  Levi  L.  Paine's 
suggestive  Evolution  of  Trinitarianism  (1900)  with  its  appendix 
challenging  the  apostolic  authorship  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  and 
particularly  Edward  H.  Hall's  Papias  and  his  Contemporaries 
(1899),  which  connects  the  Gospel  of  John  with  the  Gnostic 


208  Later  Theology 

movement  of  the  second  century.  The  majority  of  our  schol 
ars  took  a  moderately  progressive  stand.  As  the  pregnant 
debate  approached  the  New  Testament,  American  scholarship 
maintained  largely  a  dignified  silence  but  refused  to  move  the 
previous  question.  The  most  substantial  contribution  of  our 
scholars  in  the  whole  field  of  Biblical  literature  is  probably  Ezra 
Abbot's  Authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  (1880),  which,  while 
it  defends  the  widely  disputed  apostolic  authorship  of  the  book, 
admits  the  cogency  of  opposing  opinion  and  the  discrepancies 
between  the  fourth  Gospel  and  the  other  three.  George  P. 
Fisher,  Professor  of  Church  History  in  the  Yale  Divinity  School 
and  author  of  a  very  usable  History  of  the  Christian  Church, 
sensed  the  vital  import  of  the  criticism  of  the  gospels  and 
devoted  the  greater  part  of  his  careful  and  well-poised  works 
on  The  Supernatural  Origin  of  Christianity  (1870)  and  Grounds 
of  Theistic  and  Christian  Belief  (1883)  to  a  vigorous  and  able 
defence  of  the  historicity  of  the  gospels.  But  while  doing  so 
with  full  conviction,  he  is  clear-sighted  enough  to  declare: 

The  Bible  is  one  thing  and  Christianity  is  another.  The  religion 
of  Christ,  in  the  right  signification  of  these  terms,  is  not  to  be  con 
founded  with  the  Scriptures,  even  of  the  New  Testament.  The 
point  of  view  from  which  the  Bible,  in  its  relation  to  Christianity, 
is  looked  on  as  the  Koran  appears  to  devout  Mohammedans,  is  a 
mistaken  one.  The  entire  conception,  according  to  which  the 
energies  of  the  Divine  Being,  as  exerted  in  the  Christian  revelation, 
are  thought  to  have  been  concentrated  on  the  production  of  a  book 
is  a  misconception  and  one  that  is  prolific  of  error. 

Or  as  T.  T.  Munger,  Professor  Fisher's  neighbour  in  New 
Haven,  has  it  in  his  notable  essay  on  the  New  Theology:  "It 
[the  Bible]  is  not  a  revelation  but  is  a  history  of  a  revelation ;  it 
is  a  chosen  and  indispensable  means  of  the  redemption  of  the 
world,  but  it  is  not  the  absolute  means, — that  is  in  the  Spirit." 
While  Marvin  R.  Vincent  is  right  in  saying  that  "Germany 
furnishes  the  most  and  the  best, "  our  theologians  have  main 
tained  an  open  mind  in  the  study  of  the  book  upon  which  their 
whole  discipline  rests. 

One  reason,  then,  for  the  waning  prestige  of  theology  is 
the  fact  that  its  source  of  authority  can  no  longer  be  regarded 
as  lying  in  a  class  apart  from  all  other  works  of  the  human 


Evolution  209 

spirit.  Its  aloofness  and  uniqueness  are  even  more  threatened, 
however,  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  which  subsumes  not 
only  the  Christian  religion  but  the  entire  nature  of  man  under 
universal  rubrics.  At  first  this  doctrine  shocked  not  only  the 
theological  but  also  the  scientific  thinkers  of  America.  Louis 
Agassiz  and  Asa  Gray  opposed  it  almost  as  vigorously  as  did 
Charles  Hodge,  who  declared  "that  a  more  absolutely  incredi 
ble  theory  was  never  propounded  for  acceptance  among  men." 
The  burden  of  his  logical  and  able  What  is  Darwinism?  (1874) 
is  expressed  in  these  sentences : 

The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  is  that  the  denial  of  design 
in  nature  is  virtually  the  denial  of  God.  Mr.  Darwin's  theory 
does  deny  all  design  in  nature,  therefore,  his  theory  is  virtually 
atheistical ;  his  theory,  not  he  himself.  He  believes  in  a  Creator. 
But — He  is  virtually  consigned,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  to 
non-existence. 

That  this  attitude  toward  evolution  was  speedily  changed 
among  theologians  was  due  partly  to  President  James  McCosh 
(181 1-94)  of  Princeton.  He  had  but  recently  come  from  Great 
Britain  to  America.  Many  of  his  long  list  of  books,  expounding 
the  Scottish  "Common  Sense"  philosophy,  had  been  written. 
There  was  no  question  of  his  complete  orthodoxy,  of  his  intense 
religious  zeal,  or  of  his  international  standing  as  thinker  and 
educator.  He,  however,  gave  liberal  recognition  to  "powers 
modifying  evolution."  These  agents  are  light,  life,  sensation, 
instinct  and  intelligence,  morality.  "As  evolution  by  physi 
cal  causes  cannot  [produce  them],  we  infer  that  God  does  it 
by  an  immediate  fiat,  even  as  He  created  matter.  ...  It 
makes  God  continue  the  work  of  creation,  and  if  God's  creation 
be  a  good  work,  why  should  He  not  continue  it?" ' 

In  wide  circles  this  acceptance  of  evolution  of  species  went 
hand  in  hand  with  the  denial  of  the  unlimited  sway  of  evolu 
tion.  Chasms  which  "no  evolution  can  leap"  were  insisted 
upon,  "between  the  inorganic  and  the  organic,  between  the 
irrational  and  the  rational,  between  the  non-moral  and  the 
moral."  It  was  widely  felt  that  "Natural  Selection "  is  inade 
quate  to  account  for  the  entire  process  of  evolution,  and  Dar 
win's  variability  of  species  was  emphasized.  Thus  for  example 

1  Religious  Aspect  of  Evolution,  p.  54. 
VOL.  in — 14 


210  Later  Theology 

Lewis  Diman,  who  left  the  pastorate  for  a  professorship  of 
history  in  Brown  University,  asserts  in  his  Lowell  lectures  on 
The  Theistic  Argument  (1882) : 

Some  internal  principle  of  transformation  must  be  admitted. 
...  If  we  allow  that  the  modifications  of  an  organ  are  the  result  of 
some  more  or  less  conscious  tendency  which  serves  as  a  directing 
principle,  then  we  are  brought  to  recognize  finality  as  the  very 
foundation  of  nature.  ...  To  affirm  that  life  is  the  continuous 
adjustment  of  inner  relations  to  outer  relations  is  to  affirm  nothing 
to  the  point,  since  the  adjustment  is  the  very  fact  for  which  we  are 
seeking  to  account. 

Or  as  the  scintillating  Joseph  Cook  from  his  lecture-throne 
in  Tremont  Temple,  Boston,  put  it:  "The  law  of  development 
explains  much  but  not  itself."  Gradually,  however  the 
imagination  of  theologians,  like  that  of  other  men,  refused  to 
accentuate  the  small  gaps  of  the  stupendous  process  and  evolu 
tion,  not  very  clearly  defined  or  delimited,  became  accepted  as 
God's  method  of  creation. 

Belief  in  the  unique  sonship  of  Christ  is  a  difficulty  in  the 
complete  acceptance  of  evolution.  George  Harris  of  Andover 
Seminary  and  later  President  of  Amherst  College  writes : ' '  There 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  other  man  will  be  thus  God- 
filled.  .  .  .  We  may  well  believe  that  he  was  one  who  trans 
cended  the  human."1  Because  Christ  produced  "a  new  moral 
type,"  Harris  feels  that  we  need  not  deny  either  his  nature 
miracles  or  his  resurrection.  Among  the  most  thoroughgoing 
Christian  evolutionists  of  our  period  may  be  mentioned 
President  Hyde  (1858-1917)  of  Bowdoin  College  and  Presi 
dent  John  Bascom  (1827-1911)  of  the  University  of  Wiscon 
sin.  The  latter,  in  his  Evolution  and  Religion  or  Faith  as  a 
Part  of  a  Complete  Cosmic  System  (1915),  rejoices  in  the  breadth 
of  view  and  the  boundless  hope  with  which  the  doctrine  of  evolu 
tion  invests  its  believers.  In  youth  Bascom  studied  both  law  and 
theology ;  in  mature  years  he  taught  sociology  and  philosophy ; 
he  occupied  influential  positions  in  the  educational  institutions 
of  the  East  and  the  West.  His  lapidary  style  and  his  avoidance 
of  the  concrete  have  kept  his  numerous  works  confined  to  a 
small  circle  of  readers,  but  they  are  thankful  for  them. 

1  Moral  Evolution,  chapter  xvi. 


Foreign  Missions  211 

Evolution  [he  writes]  implies  a  movement  perfectly  coherent 
in  every  portion  of  it.  It  is  one  therefore  which  can  be  traced  in 
all  its  parts  by  the  mind — one  in  which  we,  as  intelligent  agents, 
are  partakers,  first,  as  diligently  inquiring  into  it;  second,  as  con 
currently  active  under  it,  and  third,  as  in  no  inconsiderable  degree 
modifying  its  results.  .  .  .  The  secret  of  evolution  lies  here — We 
always  lie  under  the  creative  hand  at  the  centre  of  creative  forces. 
.  .  .  We  are  constantly  speaking  of  the  eternal  and  immutable 
character  of  truth.  .  .  .  These  adjectives  are  hardly  applicable. 
The  universe  does  not  tarry  in  its  nest.  It  is  ever  becoming  another 
and  superior  product.  .  .  .  We  must  accept  the  truth  as  giving  u*s 
directions  of  thought,  axes  of  growth,  and  no  final  product  whatever. 

A  third  great  factor  in  destroying  the  isolation  of  Christian 
ity  from  human  life,  worthy  to  be  mentioned  with  Biblical 
criticism  and  the  theory  of  evolution,  was  the  wide-spreading 
interest  in  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise.  The  various 
monographs  in  the  excellent  American  Church  History  series 
indicate  that  missions  share  with  education  and  the  federation 
of  the  sects  the  chief  interest  of  the  denominational  life  of  this 
period.  An  increasingly  large  number  of  intelligent  men  and 
women  went  into  the  lands  "occupied"  by  other  religions  for 
the  sake  of  Christianizing  them.  They  returned  frequently 
with  the  reports  of  their  activity,  their  successes,  and  their 
difficulties.  The  chief  difficulty  which  confronted  them  in  the 
civilized  lands  of  the  East  was  the  firmly  rooted  conceptions 
and  emotions  at  the  base  of  Hinduism,  Buddhism,  Confucian 
ism,  and  Mohammedanism.  It  became  borne  in  upon  the 
Christian  consciousness  that  Christianity  and  religion  were  not 
synonymous.  Before  they  realized  it,  the  churches  were  face 
to  face  with  the  discipline  of  "Comparative  Religion" — what 
Nash  called  "the  most  significant  debate  the  world  has  ever 
known."1  James  Freeman  Clarke,  one  of  the  tenderest  and 
truest  ministers  of  Jesus  in  New  England,  composed  a  series  of 
Lowell  lectures  on  Ten  Great  Religions  (1871)  which  went 
through  at  least  twenty- two  editions,  and  brought  a  knowledge 
of  the  high  aspirations  of  other  religious  leaders  to  Christian 
people.  Toward  the  end  of  our  period,  the  World's  Parliament 
of  Religions,  held  in  conjunction  with  the  Columbian  Exposi 
tion  in  Chicago,  composed  of  representatives  of  ten  religions, 

1  Ethics  and  Revelation,  p.  92. 


212  Later  Theology 

visited  by  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  people, 
gave  dramatic  underscoring  to  the  "Brotherhood  of  Religions" 
—the  phrase  in  which  they  were  welcomed  by  one  of  the 
authorities — and  adopted  as  its  motto  the  words  from  Malachi : 
"Have  we  not  all  one  Father?  hath  not  one  God  created  us?" 

It  was  possible,  of  course,  to  take  the  ground — and  it  was 
at  first  widely  taken — that  these  religions  were  so  many  evi 
dences  of  the  sinfulness  of  mankind.  James  S.  Dennis,  author 
of  the  three-volume  work  on  Christian  Missions  and  Social 
Progress  (1898) — a  mine  of  rare  and  accurate  sociological 
material — holds:  "They  are  the  corruptions  and  perversion  of 
a  primitive,  monotheistic  faith,  which  was  directly  taught  by 
God  to  the  early  progenitors  of  the  race.  .  .  .  They  are  gross 
caricatures  and  fragmentary  semblances  of  the  true  religion." 
W.  C.  Wilkinson  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  speaking  at  the 
Parliament  of  Religions,  declared :  ' '  The  attitude  of  Christianity 
towards  religions  other  than  itself  is  an  attitude  of  universal, 
absolute,  eternal,  unappeasable  hostility,  while  toward  all  men 
its  attitude  is  an  attitude  of  grace,  mercy,  peace  for  whosoever 
will."  And  the  noble  and  eloquent  Bishop  J.  M.  Thoburn  of 
India  castigates  the  preposterous  view  that  the  great  religions 
were  all  originated  and  developed  by  God  Himself  and  that  they 
all  have  been  and  still  are  serving  their  purpose  in  the  education 
of  the  human  race,  and  declares  that  he  has  "no  more  respect 
for  Mohammedanism  as  a  system  than  for  Mormonism." 

As  time  went  on,  however,  a  wise  agnosticism  regarding 
the  origin  of  the  religions  of  the  Eastern  world  came  to  be 
combined  with  an  ever  more  intelligently  founded  conviction 
of  the  moral  supremacy  of  Christianity.  Arthur  H.  Smith, 
brilliant  speaker  and  keen  observer,  has  given  a  record  of  his 
twenty- two  years  of  life  in  China  in  the  popular  books  Chinese 
Characteristics  (1894)  and  Village  Life  in  China  (1899).  He 
finds  the  Confucian  classics  to  be  "the  best  chart  ever  con 
structed  by  man"  and  feels  that  "perhaps  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  its  authors  may  have  had  in  some  sense  a  divine 
guidance."  He  still  insists,  however,  that  the  Chinese  lack 
"character  and  conscience"  and  that  they  must  have  "a 
knowledge  of  God  and  a  new  conception  of  man ' '  to  attain  them. 
William  N.  Clarke,  after  a  tour  of  the  missions  abroad,  sums 
up  thus : 


Comparative  Religion  2I3 

In  Confucianism,  where  the  religious  movement  is  ethical,  the 
ethics  become  human  and  religion  is  lost.  In  Buddhism,  where  it  is 
philosophical,  the  philosophy  becomes  pessimistic  and  religion  dies 
out.  In  Hinduism,  where  it  is  emotional,  the  emotion  becomes 
degrading  and  religion  is  defiled.  In  Mohammedanism,  where  it  is 
doctrinal,  the  doctrine  becomes  cold  and  lifeless  and  religion  is 
atrophied.  ...  A  personal  God,  possessing  a  moral  character  and 
offering  himself  in  personal  relations  to  man,  is  known  in  Christianity 
alone. 

But  a  still  more  outspoken  sympathy  and  reverence  for  the 
religions  which  Christianity  is  to  ''complete"  are  to  be  found 
among  missionaries  and  their  devoutest  supporters.  George 
William  Knox,  for  fifteen  years  a  missionary  in  Japan  and  after 
ward  Professor  of  the  Philosophy  and  History  of  Religion  in 
Union  Theological  Seminary,  who  died  in  Corea  while  Union 
Seminary  Lecturer  in  the  East,  thus  expresses  himself  in  The 
Spirit  of  the  Orient  (1906) : 

If  God  rules,  we  cannot  join  in  the  wholesale  condemnation  of 
the  East  as  if  it  were  a  blot  on  His  creation.  ...  As  one  thinks  of 
Confucianism,  its  vast  antiquity,  its  immense  influence  over  such 
multitudes,  its  practical  common  sense,  its  freedom  from  all  that  is 
superstitious  or  licentious  or  cruel  or  priestly,  of  the  intelligent  men 
it  has  led  to  high  views  of  righteousness,  one  cannot  but  regard  it  as 
a  revelation  from  the  God  of  truth  and  righteousness. 

As  we  should  expect,  this  viewpoint  was  strongly  urged 
at  the  Parliament  of  Religions  in  Chicago.  Dr.  Barrows,  its 
organizer,  asked  the  frank  question:  "Why  should  not 
Christians  be  glad  to  learn  what  God  has  wrought  through 
Buddha  and  Zoroaster?"  And  Robert  Hume,  a  missionary 
from  India  who  had  been  prominently  identified  with  the 
liberal  wing  in  the  Andover  controversy,  and  author  of  Missions 
from  the  Modern  View  (1905),  declared: 

By  the  contact  of  Christian  and  Hindu  thought,  each  will  help 
the  other.  .  .  .  The  Hindu's  recognition  of  the  immanence  of 
God  in  every  part  of  his  universe  will  quicken  the  present  move 
ment  of  western  thought  to  recognize  everywhere  a  present  and  a 
living  God.  The  Hindu's  longing  for  unity  will  help  the  western 
mind  ...  to  appreciate  .  .  .  that  there  has  been  and  will  be  one 


2I4  Later  Theology 

plan  and  one  purpose  from  the  least  atom  to  the  highest  intelligence. 
From  the  testimony  of  Hindu  thought,  Christians  will  more  appreci 
ate  the  superiority  of  the  spiritual  and  invisible  over  the  material 
and  the  seen,  of  the  eternal  over  the  evanescent. 

At  the  close  of  the  Parliament,  two  lectureships  were  es 
tablished  to  conserve  the  temper  and  purpose  of  that  re 
markable  assemblage.  One  of  these  is  named  the  Barrows 
lectureship,  and  upon  its  incumbent  is  laid  the  duty  of  deliver 
ing  a  series  of  lectures,  interpretative  of  the  Christian  spirit, 
in  the  intellectual  centres  of  the  East.  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall, 
the  President  of  Union  Theological  Seminary,  was  twice  the  Bar 
rows  lecturer.  As  the  result  of  this  last  strenuous  and  congenial 
service  he  laid  down  his  devoted  life.  Between  those  two 
periods  of  Oriental  travel  he  delivered  the  Cole  lectures  before 
Vanderbilt  University,  on  the  The  Universal  Elements  of  the 
Christian  Religion  (1905).  Their  chief  impression  concerns 
the  folly  of  further  sectarianism  in  the  Protestant  communion, 
but  upon  the  matter  immediately  occupying  us  the  lecturer 
declares  in  words  thoroughly  and  inclusively  typical  of  our 
period : 

When  one  stands  in  the  heart  of  the  venerable  East;  feels  the 
atmosphere  charged  with  religious  impulse;  reads  on  the  faces  of  the 
people  marks  of  the  unsatisfied  soul;  considers  the  monumental 
expression  of  the  religious  idea  in  grand  and  enduring  architectural 
forms,  then  the  suggestion  that  all  this  means  nothing — that  it  is  to 
be  stamped  out  and  exterminated  before  Christianity  can  rise  upon 
its  ruins, — becomes  an  unthinkable  suggestion.  I  look  with 
reverence  upon  the  hopes  and  yearnings  of  non-Christian  faiths, 
believing  them  to  contain  flickering  and  broken  lights  of  God,  which 
shall  be  purged  and  purified  and  consummated  through  the 
absolute  self -revelation  of  the  Father  in  Christ  Incarnate." 

As  a  result  then  of  these  three  great  world-movements  of 
thought — the  science  of  Biblical  criticism,  the  theory  of  evolu 
tion,  and  the  emergence  of  comparative  religion — Christian 
theology  has  renounced  its  lofty  isolation  and  become  a  depart 
ment  of  human  knowledge.  But  though  finding  religion  at  the 
heart  of  common  human  life,  instead  of  in  a  holy  sphere  apart 
from  it,  modern  theologians  have  not  found  it  empty  of  signifi 
cance.  They  have  discovered  the  world  to  be  not,  as  Plato 


Christian  Service  2I5 

feared,  a  creature  marked  by  changing  cycles  but  the  theatre  and 
stuff  of  a  steady  upward  movement,  culminating  in  man.  They 
have  found  the  Christian  Bible  to  contain  the  most  significant 
segment  of  man's  history,  to  be  the  transcript  of  that  strenuous 
and  sublime  process  by  which  the  foundations  of  reverence  and 
justice  and  truth  were  laid  for  Love  to  build  upon.  They 
have  discovered  Jesus  of  Nazareth  to  be  Love's  supreme  crea 
tion  and  channel.  They  believe  the  Christian  function  to  be 
the  transformation  of  human  life  by  the  energy  of  that  Love. 
They  find  that  mankind  is  to  be  led,  as  George  W.  Knox  said, 
"not  along  the  road  of.  dialectics  to  our  God  but  by  the  great 
highway  of  service  to  our  fellowmen."  Consequently,  with  a 
growing  scorn  for  sectarian  problems  and  debates,  they  are 
applying  themselves  to  the  outstanding  tasks  of  human  society. 
Here  many  scholars  and  pastors  have  wrought  nobly.  In  the 
earlier  stages  of  this  modern  thought  the  books  of  Josiah  Strong 
and  C.  Loring  Brace  and  Edward  Everett  Hale1  were  of  much 
avail.  William  J.  Tucker  made  the  chair  of  Practical  Theology 
at  Andover  seem  one  of  Sociology  and  directed  the  founding 
of  the  first  settlement  house  in  Boston.  Joseph  Tuckerman 
founded  a  pastorship-at-large  in  the  same  city  and  helped  to 
crystallize  Unitarian  social  sympathy  in  paths  of  definite  ser 
vice  to  the  poor.  These  men  and  many  others  have  con 
tributed  to  what  E.  Winchester  Donald  of  Trinity  Church, 
Boston,  so  happily  called  in  his  Lowell  lectures  "The  Expan 
sion  of  Religion."  From  this  social  viewpoint,  two  eminent 
educators,  in  particular,  have  wrought  at  a  revolution  in 
theology,  William  DeWitt  Hyde,  already  mentioned,  and 
Walter  Rauschenbusch  (1861-1918)  of  Rochester  Theological 
Seminary — the  latter  perhaps  the  most  creative  spirit  in  the 
American  theological  world.  The  heart  of  their  gospel  may 
be  presented,  though  inadequately,  in  a  few  sentences: 

This  glorious  work  of  helping  to  complete  God's  fair  creation; 
this  high  task  of  making  human  life  and  human  society  the  realiza 
tion  of  the  Father's  loving  will  for  all  his  children;  this  is  the  real 
substance  of  the  spiritual  life,  of  which  the  services  and  devotions 
of  the  church  are  but  the  outward  forms.  They  ought  not  to  be 
separated.  Yet  if  we  can  have  but  one,  social  service  is  of  infinitely 
more  worth  than  pious  profession.  .  .  .  The  world  has  been  re- 
1  See  Book  III,  Chaps,  vi  and  xin. 


216  Later  Theology 

deemed  from  the  moment  when  Christ  came  into  it;  from  the 
moment  when  Love  was  consciously  accepted  as  the  true  law  of 
human  life.  This  Christian  principle  of  loving  service  and  willing 
self-sacrifice  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  man  ...  is  the 
spiritual  principle  of  the  modern  world.  ...  It  is  not  always 
explicitly  conscious  of  the  historic  source  of  its  inspiration ;  it  is  not 
always  in  intellectual  sympathy  with  the  formulas  in  which  the 
Christian  tradition  is  expressed.  But  .  .  .  the  presence  of  this 
Spirit  of  Love  as  the  accepted  and  accredited  ideal  of  conduct  and 
character  is  itself  the  proof  that  the  world  has  been  redeemed.  It  is 
the  promise  and  potency  of  its  complete  redemption. r 

The  religion  that  lived  in  the  heart  of  Jesus  and  spoke  in  his 
words  not  only  had  a  social  faith;  it  was  a  social  faith.  .  .  .  The 
Kingdom  of  God  calls  for  no  ceremonial,  for  no  specific  doings.  .  .  . 
Like  Jesus,  it  makes  love  to  God  and  love  to  man  the  sole  outlet 
for  the  energy  of  religion  and  thereby  harnesses  that  energy  to  the 
ethical  purification  of  the  natural  social  relations  of  men.  .  .  .  We 
are  a  wasteful  nation.  But  the  most  terrible  waste  of  all  has  been 
the  waste  of  the  power  of  religion  on  dress  performances.  .  .  .  The 
Kingdom  of  God  deals  not  only  with  the  immortal  souls  of  men,  but 
with  their  bodies,  their  nourishment,  their  homes,  their  cleanliness, 
and  it  makes  those  who  serve  these  fundamental  needs  of  life, 
veritable  ministers  of  God.  ...  If  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth 
once  more  became  the  central  object  of  religion,  Christianity  would 
necessarily  resume  the  attitude  of  attack  with  which  it  set  out.  It 
had  the  temper  of  the  pioneer.  But  where  it  has  taken  the  existing 
order  for  granted  and  has  devoted  itself  to  saving  souls,  it  has 
become  a  conservative  force,  bent  on  maintaining  the  great  institu 
tion  of  the  church  and  preserving  the  treasure  of  doctrine  and 
supernatural  grace  committed  to  it.  When  we  accept  the  faith  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God,  we  take  the  same  attitude  toward  our  own  social 
order  which  missionaries  take  toward  the  social  life  of  heathenism. 
.  .  .  The  Church  would  have  to  "about  face."  The  centre  of 
gravity  in  the  whole  Christian  structure  of  history  would  be  shitted 
from  the  past  to  the  future. 2 

Many  Christian  pastors  have  attempted  to  live  in  the  spirit 
of  this  gospel,  but  it  is  scarcely  invidious  to  single  out  Washing 
ton  Gladden  (1836-1918)  as  the  best-known  and  most  effective 
worker  for  the  regeneration  of  the  social  organism  in  the  pulpit 
of  our  period.  He  was  pastor  in  North  Adams  and  Springfield, 

1  Hyde,  Social  Theology,  pp.  215-16,  229-30. 

2  Rauschenbusch,  Christianizing  the  Social  Order,  pp.  96-102. 


Washington  Gladden  217 

Massachusetts,  and,  for  over  thirty  years,  in  Columbus,  Ohio. 
He  was  the  author  of  many  books  on  the  social  and  religious 
readjustment,  of  which  perhaps  On  Being  a  Christian  (1876), 
Applied  Christianity  (1886),  Who  Wrote  the  Bible?  (1891),  Tools 
and  the  Man  (1893),  The  Christian  Pastor  (1898),  and  The 
Labor  Question  (1911)  have  had  the  largest  sale.  No  one  of 
these  volumes,  however,  was  written  merely  in  order  to  be 
published ;  they  grew  out  of  the  pressing  problems  of  his  minis 
try.  His  fine-spirited  Recollections  (1909)  indicates  the  stormy 
theological  and  sociological  times  through  which  he  lived. 
He  refused  to  be  silent  and  he  was  fortunately  mediatory  by 
nature.  His  fairness  won  him  a  hearing  and  his  good-will 
gave  him  effectiveness.  He  challenged  the  official  conserva 
tism  of  the  Congregational  churches,  he  threw  his  influence  into 
the  struggle  for  untrammelled  investigation  of  the  Bible,  he 
insisted  upon  a  larger  share  of  the  profits  of  industry  for  the 
labourers,  he  initiated  the  movement  for  the  change  of  the  time 
of  election  in  Ohio  from  October  to  November,  he  had  himself 
elected  to  the  city  council  in  Columbus  when  important 
franchises  were  to  be  decided,  and  became  firmly  convinced 
of  the  necessity  of  municipal  ownership  of  public  works.  He 
writes:  " Dishonest  men  can  be  bought  and  ignorant  men  can 
be  manipulated.  This  is  the  kind  of  government  which  private 
capital,  invested  in  public-service  industries,  naturally  feels  that 
it  must  have.  ...  I  do  not  think  that  the  people  of  any  city 
can  afford  to  have  ten  or  twenty  or  two  hundred  millions  of 
dollars  directly  and  consciously  interested  in  promoting  bad 
government."  During  a  fierce  street-car  strike  in  Cleveland 
in  1886  he  journeyed  thither  and  spoke  to  a  great  meeting  of 
employers  and  employees  on  "Is  it  Peace  or  War?"  openly 
favouring  the  right  of  the  workingmen  to  combine  for  the  de 
fence  of  their  interests.  In  a  later  street-car  strike  in  his  own 
city  he  intervened,  insisting  upon  the  arbitration  which  the 
labourers  desired  and  the  employers  refused.  He  was  an  enemy 
of  war.  As  late  as  1909  he  declared  that  he  wished  secession 
had  been  tried :  "  I  cannot  help  wishing  that  the  ethical  passion 
of  the  North  for  liberty  had  been  matched  with  a  faith  equally 
compelling  in  the  cogency  of  good-will."  An  enemy  of  social 
ism,  he  became  at  length  convinced  that  the  functions  of  gov 
ernment  should  be  extended.  His  opinions  moved  slowly  but 


2i 8  Later  Theology 

somewhat  in  advance  of  the  opinion  of  the  churches.  When  he 
died  in  1918  the  New  York  Evening  Post  remarked:  " Wash 
ington  Gladden  seemed  to  have  an  extra  sense.  .  .  .  In  matters 
affecting  religion  and  church  organization,  in  matters  political, 
in  matters  social,  in  matters  international,  he  had  an  almost 
uncanny  way  of  anticipating  what  was  to  come."  The  truth 
of  this  comment  may  be  tested  by  a  paragraph  from  his  essay 
on  The  Strength  and  Weakness  of  Socialism,  written  as  far  back 
as  1886. 

Out  of  unrestricted  competition  arise  many  wrongs  that  the 
State  must  redress  and  many  abuses  which  it  must  check.  It 
may  become  the  duty  of  the  State  to  reform  its  taxation,  so  that 
its  burdens  shall  rest  less  heavily  upon  the  lower  classes ;  to  repress 
monopolies  of  all  sorts;  to  prevent  and  punish  gambling;  to  regulate 
or  control  the  railroads  and  telegraphs;  to  limit  the  ownership  of 
land;  to  modify  the  laws  of  inheritance;  and  possibly  to  levy  a 
progressive  income-tax,  so  that  the  enormous  fortunes  should  bear 
more  rather  than  less  than  their  share  of  the  public  burdens. 

He  was  a  strong  believer  in  profit-sharing;  he  was  president 
of  an  association  for  Christian  education  of  the  negroes  and 
Indians  and  backward  peoples ;  he  was  the  moderator  of  the  Con 
gregational  National  Council;  he  was  the  champion  of  interna 
tional  peace.  He  was  withal  a  Christian  pastor  and  conscientious 
preacher.  He  said,  indeed: 

I  maintain  that  good  sermons  may  be  and  ought  to  be  good 
literature;  that  the  free,  direct,  conversational  handling  of  a  theme  in 
the  presence  of  an  audience  makes  good  reading  in  a  book.  If  I  am 
permitted  to  judge  my  own  work,  I  should  say  that  the  best  of  my 
books  as  literature  is  the  book  of  sermons,  Where  Does  the  Sky 
Begin  ? 

The  one  man  who,  in  our  period,  best  demonstrated  this 
thesis  of  Washington  Gladden  is  Phillips  Brooks  (1835-93). x 
He  was  most  fortunately  constituted  and  placed  to  be  a  great 
preacher.  Just  about  the  time  of  his  birth  in  Boston,  his 
family  gave  up  its  pew  in  the  Unitarian  meeting-house  and,  as  a 

1  The  volume  the  writer  of  this  chapter  would  recommend  as  an  introduction 
to  Brooks's  writings  is  the  fourth  series  of  his  sermons,  entitled  Twenty  Sermons, 
published  in  1886.  The  new  edition  (1910)  is  entitled  Visions  and  Tasks. 


Phillips  Brooks  219 

compromise  between  its  Unitarian  and  Congregational  strands, 
took  one  in  St.  Paul's  Episcopal  Church,  its  freedom  and 
strength  becoming  tinged  with  mystery  and  wrapped  about  in 
dignified  historicity.  And  when  Phillips  Brooks,  after  an 
unsuccessful  experiment  in  teaching  in  the  Boston  Latin  School, 
hesitatingly  determined  to  be  a  minister,  his  mind  seemed  to 
rest  in  the  solidarity  of  humanity,  in  the  perpetual  and  abiding 
emotions,  conceptions,  and  satisfactions  which  underlie  all 
change.  The  strong  conservatism,  so  often  noted  in  college 
students,  seemed  to  remain  with  him  long  after  the  under 
graduate  years  and  to  be  a  constitutive  element  of  his  character. 
With  the  great  controversies  of  his  times  he  was  not  unac 
quainted.  He  took  the  gradually  prevailing  view  with  regard 
to  them  all.  He  believed  the  great  books  of  other  religions 
to  be  "younger  brothers"  of  the  Bible.  He  travelled  with 
sympathetic  interest  in  India  and  Japan.  ''No  mischief," 
he  thought,  "can  begin  to  equal  the  mischief  which  must  come 
from  the  obstinate  dishonesty  of  men  who  refuse  to  recognize 
any  of  the  new  light  which  has  been  thrown  upon  the  Bible." 
When  Heber  Newton  was  threatened  with  a  trial  for  heresy 
because  of  his  belief  in  the  methods  and  some  of  the  more 
radical  conclusions  of  the  higher  criticism,  Brooks  invited 
him  to  preach  in  his  pulpit.  He  says  remarkably  little  regard 
ing  the  Darwinian  controversy.  He  had  but  a  superficial 
acquaintance  with  science.  He  finds  his  comfort  in  believing 
that  "the  orderliness  of  nature  must  make  more  certain  the 
existence  of  an  orderer, "  and  suggests  that  "Christ's  truth  of 
the  Father  Life  of  God  has  the  most  intimate  connection  with 
Darwin's  doctrine  of  development,  which  is  simply  the 
continual  indwelling  and  action  of  creative  power."  He 
added,  however,  but  little  to  the  controversies.  Save  where, 
as  in  the  problem  of  comparative  religion,  they  came  into 
close  contact  with  his  own  gospel  of  the  universal  sonship  of 
man  to  God,  he  was  not  fundamentally  interested  in  them. 
His  sympathetic  sermon  on  Gamaliel,  who  left  the  upshot  of 
controversies  to  God,  is  characteristic.  In  the  Theological 
Seminary  at  Alexandria  he  wrote  in  his  student's  notebook: 

Truth  has  laid  her  strong  piers  in  the  past  Eternity  and  the 
Eternity  to  come  and  now  she  is  bridging  the  interval  with  this  life 


220  Later  Theology 

of  ours.  .  .  .  Controversies  grow  tame  and  tiresome  to  the  mind 
which  has  looked  on  Truth.  .  .  .  We  walk  the  bridge  of  life. 
Can  we  not  trust  its  safety  on  the  two  great  resting-places  of  God's 
wisdom? 

Phillips  Brooks  was  habitually  more  aware  of  the  back 
ground  than  of  the  foreground.  Occasionally,  indeed,  it  was 
otherwise.  In  his  Philadelphia  ministry  he  spoke  out  boldly, 
at  the  conclusion  of  the  War,  for  negro  suffrage.  In  his  later 
life  the  radical  in  him  showed  itself  more  conspicuously.  He 
rose  in  his  place  in  the  Church  Congress  to  plead  for  the  use  of 
the  Revised  Version  of  the  Bible  in  public  worship,  and  in  the 
Convention  of  1886  he  protested  vigorously  against  the  pro 
posal  to  strike  the  words  "Protestant  Episcopal"  from  the 
title  of  his  Church.  On  his  return  from  the  Convention  to 
Boston,  he  even  went  so  far  as  to  declare  from  the  pulpit  that 
if  the  name  were  changed,  he  did  not  see  how  any  one  could 
remain  in  the  Church  who,  like  himself,  disbelieved  in  the  doc 
trine  of  Apostolic  Succession.  But  in  the  main  he  lived  above 
controversy.  He  believed  neither  in  ''insisting  on  full  require 
ments  of  doctrine  nor  on  paring  them  down.  .  .  .  The  duty 
of  such  times  as  these  is  to  go  deeper  into  the  spirituality  of  our 
truths.  .  .  .  Jesus  let  the  shell  stand  as  he  found  it,  until 
the  new  life  within  could  burst  it  for  itself."  His  rare  bio 
grapher,  A.  V.  G.  Allen,  makes  this  significant  comment  upon 
a  Thanksgiving  sermon  of  his : 

He  offers  no  solution  of  the  conflict  between  religion  and  science. 
But  it  means  something  that  in  the  disorder  of  thought  and  feeling, 
so  many  men  are  fleeing  to  the  study  of  orderly  nature.  He  urges 
his  hearers  to  make  much  of  the  experiences  of  life  which  are  per 
petual,  joy,  sorrow,  friendship,  work,  charity,  relation  with  one's 
brethren,  for  these  are  eternal. 

For  Brooks  this  was  no  evasion.  It  was  digging  below  the 
questions  of  the  day  to  the  eternal,  unquestioned,  proven 
truths  of  human  experience.  It  was  losing  one's  self  in  hu 
manity.  He  occasionally  looked  forward,  and  increasingly, 
but  he  loved  best  to  look  from  the  present  backward  and  up 
ward.  Just  after  his  graduation  from  Harvard,  we  find  this 
in  his  notebook: 


Phillips  Brooks  221 

A  spark  of  original  thought  .  .  .  strengthens  a  man's  feeling  of 
individuality,  but  weakens  his  sense  of  race.  It  is  an  inspiring, 
ennobling,  elevating,  but  not  a  social  thing.  But  what  a  kindly 
power,  what  a  warm  human  family  feeling  clusters  around  the 
thought  which  we  find  common  to  our  mind  and  to  some  old  mind 
which  was  thinking  away  back  in  the  twilight  of  time.  ...  So 
when  we  recognize  a  common  impulse  or  rule  of  life  ...  we  must 
feel  humanity  in  its  spirit,  bearing  witness  with  our  spirits,  that  it 
is  the  offspring  of  a  common  divinity. 

His  native  conservatism  lived  through  the  awakening  years 
of  the  Seminary.  We  find  these  musings  in  his  notebook : 

Originality  is  a  fine  thing,  but  first  have  you  the  head  to  bear  it  ? 
.  .  .  Our  best  and  strongest  thoughts,  like  men's  earliest  and 
ruder  homes,  are  found  or  hollowed  in  the  old  primaeval  rock.  .  .  . 
Not  till  our  pride  rebels  against  the  architecture  of  these  first  homes 
and  we  go  out  and  build  more  stately  houses  of  theory  and  specula 
tion  and  discovery  and  science,  do  we  begin  to  feel  the  feebleness 
that  is  in  us. 

As  his  biographer  keenly  says:  "Nowhere  in  these  note 
books  does  Brooks  regard  himself  as  a  pioneer  in  search  of 
new  thought.  .  .  .  He  does  not  test  truth  by  individual  ex 
periences  but  by  the  larger  experiences  of  humanity."  He 
told  the  Yale  theological  students  in  his  middle  life  that  a 
part  of  the  Christian  assurance  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  Chris 
tian  message  is  "the  identical  message  which  has  comedown 
from  the  beginning."  Part  of  his  satisfaction  in  preaching 
lay  in  his  confidence  that  he  was  in  his  proper  communion. 
He  rejoiced  "in  her  strong  historic  spirit,  her  sense  of  union 
with  the  ages  which  have  passed  out  of  sight. "  The  insignia  of 
spiritual  truth  to  him  were  largely  antiquity  and  catholicity. 
He  had  profound  faith  in  the  people.  He  believed  in  prophets 
when  they  had  been  accepted  by  the  people;  that  is,  usually 
some  ages  after  they  have  lived  and  died.  Few  prominent  men 
have  let  their  friends  and  the  public  decide  in  their  crises  more 
than  Brooks — and  in  nearly  every  case  against  his  own  original 
instinct.  He  relied  on  the  heart  of  humanity  as  the  supreme 
judge.  Out  of  this  primitive  conviction  of  his  grew  his  one 
essential  message,  that  every  man  who  has  ever  lived  is  a  son 


222  Later  Theology 

of  God.  Consequently  when  a  great  doctrine  came  before  him 
which  had  the  ages  of  experience  behind  it  or  upon  it,  the 
question  he  asked  was  not  "  Is  it  true?  "  but  "Why  is  it  true?" 
or  "Wherein  resides  its  truth?"  So  it  was  with  the  great 
pivotal  doctrine  of  the  divinity  of  Christ,  or,  as  he  preferred  to 
call  it,  the  Incarnation.  He  found  its  truth  to  reside  in  the 
fact  that  Christ  had  lived  out  the  secret  yearnings  and  possi 
bilities  of  humanity;  Christ  was  the  prophecy  of  the  Christ 
that  was  everywhere  to  be.  On  the  great  question  of  the 
miracles  he  was  orthodox.  He  lived  in  a  time  when  Biblical 
criticism  in  this  country  was  in  its  earlier  stages.  He  could 
honestly  write  to  a  German  inquirer:  "There  is  nothing 
in  the  results  of  modern  scholarship  which  conflicts  with 
the  statements  in  the  Apostles'  and  Nicene  Creeds  concern 
ing  the  birth  of  Jesus."  As  Allen  remarks,  Brooks  was 
in  the  habit  of  "sheathing  his  critical  faculties  where  the 
people's  faith  was  concerned."  He  used  the  Bible,  therefore, 
pretty  much  as  he  found  it,  or  rather  he  used  what  he  found 
beneath  it. 

It  was  toward  middle  life,  about  the  time  that  a  fresh  study 
of  the  Gospels  found  expression  in  the  Influence  of  Jesus 
(1880),  that  his  emphasis  seemed  to  shift  from  historic  Chris 
tianity  to  the  personal  Christ.  Over  and  over  he  insisted  on 
the  centrality  of  Christ.  "  Not  Christianity  but  Christ !  Not 
a  doctrine  but  a  person!  Christianity  only  for  Christ!  .  .  . 
Our  religion  is — Christ.  To  believe  in  Him  is  what?  To 
say  a  Creed?  To  join  a  church?  No,  but  to  have  a  great, 
strong,  divine  Master,  whom  we  perfectly  love."  And  how 
perfectly  he  loved  him  and  how  Christ  responded  to  the  em 
braces  of  this  man's  love,  a  letter  on  the  eve  of  his  consecration 
to  the  bishopric  shows : 

These  last  years  have  a  peace  and  fulness  which  there  did  not 
use  to  be.  I  do  not  think  it  is  the  mere  quietness  of  advancing  age. 
I  am  sure  it  is  not  indifference  to  anything  which  I  used  to  care 
for.  I  am  sure  that  it  is  a  deeper  knowledge  and  truer  love  of 
Christ.  ...  I  cannot  tell  you  how  personal  this  grows  to  me. 
He  is  here.  He  knows  me  and  I  know  Him.  It  is  no  figure  of 
speech.  It  is  the  reallest  thing  in  the  world.  And  every  day 
makes  it  realler.  And  one  wonders  with  delight  what  it  will  grow 
to  as  the  years  go  on. 


Phillips  Brooks  223 

And  yet,  notwithstanding  his  anchorage  in  the  past,  he 
believed  in  a  port  ahead,  for  each  individual  primarily,  but  also 
for  the  race.  Even  his  ecstatic  and  unreserved  loyalty  to  the 
incarnate  Christ  did  not  serve  as  an  iron  door  let  down  athwart 
the  highway  of  progress.  He  intimated  that  his  teaching 
regarding  divorce  was  determined  by  temporary  circum 
stances  and  that  his  scheme  of  punishments  is  not  an  essential 
factor  of  his  religion.  It  is  true,  naturally,  with  his  strong  belief 
in  immortality  and  in  the  individual's  sonship  to  God,  that  he 
held  that  society  is  here  for  the  sake  of  the  individual  and  not 
the  individual  for  the  sake  of  society.  But  in  the  later  years 
we  find  almost  a  new  note  in  his  writings.  ' '  Life  may  become  too 
strong  for  literature, ' '  he  says.  "It  may  be  the  former  methods 
and  standards  are  not  sufficient  for  the  expression  of  the  grow 
ing  life,  its  new  activities,  its  unexpected  energies,  its  feverish 
problems.  ...  A  man  must  believe  in  the  future  more  than 
he  reverences  the  past. ' '  In  a  speech  before  the  Boston  Chamber 
of  Commerce  he  is  reported  as  having  said  that  ' '  the  world  was 
bound  to  press  onward  and  find  an  escape  from  the  things  that 
terrified  it,  not  by  retreat  but  by  a  perpetual  progress  into  the 
large  calm  that  lay  beyond."  In  the  sermon  which  gives  the 
title  to  his  volume  The  Light  of  the  World  (1890), — wherein 
is  succinctly  set  forth  his  gospel,  "the  essential  possibility  and 
richness  of  humanity  and  its  essential  belonging  to  divinity, "- 
we  have  these  majestic  words: 

It  is  so  hard  for  us  to  believe  in  the  mystery  of  man.  "Behold 
man  is  this,"  we  say,  shutting  down  some  near  gate  which  falls 
only  just  beyond,  quite  in  sight  of,  what  human  nature  already  has 
attained.  If  man  would  go  beyond  that,  he  must  be  something  else 
than  man.  And  just  then  something  breaks  the  gate  away,  and,  lo 
far  out  beyond  where  we  can  see,  stretches  the  mystery  of  man, 
the  beautiful,  the  awful  mystery  of  man.  To  him,  to  man,  all 
lower  lives  have  climbed,  and,  having  come  to  him,  have  found  a 
field  where  evolution  may  go  on  for  ever. 

Such  passages  are  rare  in  his  writings,  for  usually  his  gaze 
takes  in  the  past  with  Christ  resplendent  in  it  and  does  not  lose 
itself  in  the  future ;  then  gratitude  gets  the  upper  hand  of  strug 
gle.  He  rarely  preaches  an  entirely  "  social "  sermon.  In  The 
Christian  City,  wherein  he  departs  from  his  custom,  he  be- 


224  Later  Theology 

seeches  Londoners  to  take  heart  because  the  modern  city  is  so 
Christian,  though  unconsciously.  The  Giant  with  the  Wounded 
Heel  is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  characteristic  of  his  sermons. 
He  believes  the  giant,  man,  is  constantly  crushing  the  serpent, 
and  he  is  content  to  see  a  pretty  large  wound  in  his  heel. 

This  largeness  and  poise  of  view  is  the  most  distinctive 
characteristic  of  Phillips  Brooks.  It  stamps  him  with  the 
mark  of  intellect.  Occasionally  he  seems  to  value  the  mind 
for  itself  and  to  ascribe  to  it  standards  of  its  own.  "The  ink 
of  the  learned  is  as  precious  as  the  blood  of  the  martyrs." 
Once  he  admits,  without  catching  himself,  that  the  mind  is 
"the  noblest  part  of  us."  In  the  sermon  where  this  admission 
is  made,  The  Mind's  Love  for  God,  he  declares:  "You  cannot 
know  that  one  idea  is  necessarily  true  because  it  seems  to  help 
you,  nor  that  another  idea  is  false  because  it  wounds  and  seems 
to  hinder  you.  Your  mind  is  your  faculty  for  judging  what  is 
true. ' '  But  these  are  isolated  sayings.  Ordinarily  he  refuses  to 
think  of  the  intellect  as  a  thing  apart  from  the  entire  man,  and 
he  finds  truth,  as  did  his  Master,  inherent  in  life,  a  personal 
quality,  discovered,  determined,  and  determinable  by  personal 
ends.  When  he  first  began  to  think,  Socrates  was  almost  the 
ideal  figure.  But  later,  Socrates  seemed  thin  in  compari 
son  with  Christ.  "Socrates  brings  an  argument  to  meet  an 
objection.  Jesus  always  brings  a  nature  to  meet  a  nature;  a 
whole  being  which  the  truth  has  filled  with  strength  to  meet 
another  whole  being,  which  error  has  filled  with  feebleness." 
In  his  sermon  on  the  death  of  Lincoln  he  discloses  his  inner 
thought : 

A  great  many  people  have  discussed  very  crudely  whether 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  an  intellectual  man  or  not,  as  if  intellect 
were  a  thing,  always  of  the  same  sort,  which  you  could  precipitate 
from  the  other  constituents  of  a  man's  nature  and  weigh  by  itself. 
.  .  The  fact  is  that  in  all  the  simplest  characters,  the  line  between 
the  mental  and  moral  nature  is  always  vague  and  indistinct.  They 
run  together,  and  in  their  best  combination  you  are  unable  to  dis 
criminate,  in  the  wisdom  which  is  their  result,  how  much  is  moral 
and  how  much  is  intellectual. 

In  his  student  days  he  confides  to  his  notebook:  "A  fresh 
thought  may  be  spoiled  by  sheer  admiration.  It  was  given  us 


Phillips  Brooks  225 

to  work  in  and  to  live  by.  ...  It  will  give  its  blessing  to  us 
only  on  its  knees.  From  this  point  of  view,  thought  is  as  holy  a 
thing  as  prayer,  for  both  are  worship."  The  best  description, 
perhaps,  of  his  own  mind  is  to  be  found  in  his  enumeration  of 
the  "intellectual  characteristics  which  Christ's  disciples  gath 
ered  from  their  Master, "  namely:  "A  poetic  conception  of 
the  world  we  live  in,  a  willing  acceptance  of  mystery,  an  ex 
pectation  of  progress  by  development,  an  absence  of  fastidious 
ness  that  comes  from  a  sense  of  the  possibilities  of  all  humanity, 
and  a  perpetual  enlargement  of  thought  from  the  arbitrary  into 
the  essential." 

These  peculiar  intellectual  characteristics,  rooted  in  their 
passionate  reverence  for  humanity,  for  its  ideals  and  its  achieve 
ments,  determine  the  place  of  Brooks  among  the  great  preachers 
of  the  world.  He  is  at  his  best  when  he  preaches  by  indirec 
tion.  Enlargement  is  his  effect.  A  man  sees  his  own  time  in 
relation  to  all  time,  discovers  his  greatness  by  the  greatness  of 
which  he  is  a  part.  Brooks's  mission  was  not  to  advance  the 
frontiers  of  knowledge,  not  even  of  spiritual  knowledge,  but 
rather  to  annex  the  cleared  areas  to  the  old  domains.  His 
abiding  preoccupation — fat  alto  the  scientist,  detrimental  to  the 
sociologist,  fortunate  for  the  fame  and  immediate  influence 
of  the  preacher — was  to  hold  the  present,  changing  into  the 
future,  loyal  to  the  past.  He  was  not  the  stuff  of  which  martyrs 
are  made,  but  his  soul  was  of  that  vastness  which  kept  the  public 
from  making  martyrs  of  the  truthful.  He  seems  to  watch  and 
bless  rather  than  to  urge  forward.  His  great  service  to  his 
age  was  that  of  a  mediator.  Standing  himself  as  a  trinitarian 
and  a  supernaturalist,  rejoicing  in  the  greenness  of  the  historic 
pastures,  he  discovered  at  the  base  of  his  doctrines  the  same 
essential  spiritual  food  which  others  sought  on  freer  uplands 
and  less  confined  stretches.  He  ministered  to  orthodox  and 
unorthodox  alike  beneath  their  differences.  He  did  much  to 
keep  spiritual  evolution  free  from  the  bitterness  and  contempt 
of  revolution. 


VOL.  Ill — IS 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Later  Philosophy 

THE  prevailing  other- worldlin ess  of  American  philosophers 
seems  to  be  the  only  explanation  for  our  failure  to 
develop  an  original  and  vigorous  political  philosophy 
to  meet  our  unique  political  experience.  On  a  priori  grounds 
it  seems  indisputable  that  philosophy  must  share  the  charac 
teristics  of  the  life  of  which  it  is  a  part  and  on  which  it  is  its 
business  to  reflect.  But  we  actually  do  not  know  with  certainty 
what  kind  of  philosophy  any  given  set  of  historic  conditions 
will  always  produce.  Thus  no  one  has  convincingly  pointed 
out  any  direct  and  really  significant  influence  on  American 
philosophy  exercised  by  our  colonial  organization,  by  the  Re 
volutionary  War,  by  the  slavery  struggle,  by  the  Civil  War, 
by  our  unprecedented  immigration,  or  by  the  open  frontier 
life  which  our  historians  now  generally  regard  as  the  key  to 
American  history.  The  fact  that,  excepting  some  passages  in 
Calhoun, x  none  of  our  important  philosophic  writings  mentions 
the  existence  of  slavery  or  of  the  negro  race,  that  liberal  demo 
cratic  philosophers  like  Jefferson2  could  continue  to  own  and 
even  sell  slaves  and  still  fervently  believe  that  all  men  are 
created  free  and  equal,  ought  to  serve  as  a  reminder  of  the 
air-tight  compartments  into  which  the  human  mind  is  fre 
quently  divided,  and  of  the  extent  to  which  one's  professed 
philosophy  can  be  entirely  disconnected  from  the  routine  of 
one's  daily  occupation.  Indeed,  it  would  seem  that  most  of  our 
philosophy  is  not  a  reflection  on  life  but,  like  music  or  Utopian 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xv.  The  keen  pamphlet  on  Slavery  and  Freedom  by  A. 
T.  Bledsoe,  the  most  versatile  of  our  Southern  philosophers,  and  the  references 
to  the  ethics  of  slavery  in  Wayland's  Moral  Philosophy,  can  hardly  be  considered 
as  derogating  from  the  statement  in  the  text.  a  See  Book  I,  Chap.  vm. 

226 


Foreign  Influences  227 

and  romantic  literature,  an  sscape  from  it,  a  turning  one's  back 
upon  its  prosaic  monotony.  But  though  genuine  philosophy 
never  restricts  itself  to  purely  local  and  temporal  affairs,  the 
history  of  philosophy,  as  part  of  the  history  of  the  intellectual 
life  of  any  country,  is  largely  concerned  with  the  life  of  various 
national  or  local  traditions,  with  their  growth  and  struggles, 
and  the  interaction  between  them  and  the  general  currents  of 
life  into  which  they  must  fit,  with  the  general  conditions,  that 
is,  under  which  intellectual  life  is  carried  on. 

The  main  traditions  of  American  philosophy  have  been 
British,  that  is,  English  and  Scotch;  and  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  has  had  no  more  influence  in  the  realm  of  meta 
physical  speculation  than  it  has  had  in  the  realm  of  our  common 
law.  French  and  German  influences  have,  indeed,  not  been 
absent.  The  community  of  Western  civilization  which  found 
in  Latin  its  common  language  has  never  been  completely  broken 
up.  But  French  and  German  influences  have  not  been  any 
greater  in  the  United  States  than  in  Great  Britain.  Up  to  very 
recently  our  philosophers  have  mostly  been  theologians,  and 
the  latter,  like  the  lawyers,  cultivate  intense  loyalty  to  ancient 
traditions.  In  our  early  national  period  French  free- thought 
exercised  considerable  influence,  especially  in  the  South;  but 
the  free  thought  of  Voltaire,  Condillac,  and  Volney  was,  after 
all,  an  adaptation  of  Locke  and  English  deism ;  and  its  American 
apostles  like  Thomas  Paine,1  Priestley,  and  Thomas  Cooper  were, 
like  Franklin 2  and  Jefferson,  characteristically  British — as  were 
Hume  and  Gibbon  in  their  day.  This  movement  of  intellectual 
liberalism  was  almost  completely  annihilated  in  the  greater 
portion  of  the  country  by  the  evangelical  or  revivalist  move 
ment.  The  triumph  of  revivalism  was  rendered  easier  by  the 
weakly  organized  intellectual  life  and  the  economic  bankruptcy 
of  the  older  Southern  aristocracy,  as  reflected  in  the  financial 
difficulties  which  embarrassed  Jefferson,  Madison,  and  Monroe 
in  their  old  age.  The  second  French  wave,  the  eclectic  philo 
sophy  of  Cousin  and  Jouffroy,  was  at  bottom  simply  the  Scotch 
realism  of  Reid  and  Stewart  over  again,  with  only  slight  traces 
of  Schelling. 

With  the  organization  of  our  graduate  schools  on  German 
models,  and  with  a  large  number  of  our  teachers  taking  their 

1  See  Book  I,  Chap.  vm.  a  See  Book  I,  Chap.  vi. 


228  Later  Philosophy 

doctors'  degrees  in  Germany,  Germanic  terms  and  mannerisms 
gained  an  apparent  ascendancy  in  our  philosophic  teachings 
and  writings;  but  in  its  substance,  philosophy  in  America  has 
followed  the  modes  prevailing  in  Great  Britain.  The  first 
serious  attempt  to  introduce  German  philosophy  into  this 
country  came  with  Coleridge's  Aids  to  Reflection  (1829),  and 
the  apologetic  tone  of  President  Marsh's  introductory  essay 
showed  how  powerfully  the  philosophy  of  Locke  and  Reid  had 
become  entrenched  as  a  part  of  the  Christian  thought  of  Amer 
ica.  Some  acquaintance  with  German  philosophy  was  shown 
by  New  England  radicals  like  Theodore  Parker, '  but  in  the 
main  their  interest  in  things  Germanic  was  restricted  to  the 
realm  of  belles-lettres,  biblical  criticism,  and  philology.  Though 
some  stray  bits  of  Schelling's  romantic  nature-philosophy  be 
came  merged  in  American  transcendentalism,  the  latter  was 
really  a  form  of  Neoplatonism  directly  descended  from  the  Cam 
bridge  platonism  of  More  and  Cudworth.  Hickok's  Rational 
Psychology  (1848)  is  our  only  philosophic  work  of  the  first  two- 
thirds  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  show  any  direct  and  serious 
assimilation  of  Kant's  thought.  Hickok,  however,  professes  to 
reject  the  whole  transcendental  philosophy,  and,  in  the  main, 
the  Kantian  elements  in  his  system  are  no  larger  than  in  the 
writings  of  British  thinkers  like  Hamilton  and  Whewell.  The 
Hegelian  influence,  which  made  itself  strongly  felt  in  the 
work  of  William  T.  Harris,  was  even  more  potent  in  Great 
Britain. 

In  1 835  De  Tocqueville  reported  that  in  no  part  of  the  civil 
ized  world  was  less  attention  paid  to  philosophy  than  in  the 
United  States. 2  Whether  because  of  absorption  in  the  material 
conquest  of  a  vast  continent,  or  because  of  a  narrow  orthodoxy 
which  was  then  hindering  free  intellectual  life  in  England  as 
well  as  in  the  United  States,  the  fact  remains  that  nowhere  else 
were  free  theoretic  inquiries  held  in  such  little  honour.  As  our 
colleges  were  originally  all  sectarian  or  denominational,  clergy 
men  occupied  all  the  chairs  of  philosophy.  Despite  the  multi 
tude  of  sects,  the  Scottish  common-sense  philosophy  introduced 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  at  Princeton  by  Presi- 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  vin. 

2  One  gets  the  same  impression  from  Harriet  Martineau's  Society  in  America 
and  from  the  account  of  Philarete  Chasles. 


Common-Sense  Philosophy  229 

dent  Witherspoon,  spread  until  it  formed  almost  the  sole  basis 
of  philosophic  instruction.  Here  and  there  some  notice  was 
taken  of  Mill  and  Positivism,  and  Edward's  Freedom  of  the 
Will1  continued  to  agitate  thoughtful  minds  inside  and  out 
side  of  the  colleges,  but  in  the  main  both  idealism  and  empiri 
cism  were  suspected  as  leading  to  pantheism  or  to  downright 
atheism.  The  creation  of  the  earth  before  man  was  a  potent 
argument  against  Berkeleian  idealism  or  denial  of  matter.  The 
Scottish  common-sense  realism  was  a  democratic  philosophy  in 
the  sense  that  it  did  not  depart  widely  from  the  popular  views  as 
to  the  nature  of  the  material  world,  the  soul,  and  God. 2  It  did 
not  rely  on  subtle  arguments,  but  appealed  to  established  beliefs. 
It  could  easily  be  reconciled  with  the  most  literal  interpretation 
of  the  Bible  and  could  thus  be  used  as  a  club  against  freethinkers. 
Above  all,  it  was  eminently  teachable.  It  eliminated  all  disturb 
ing  doubts  by  direct  appeal  to  the  testimony  of  consciousness, 
and  readily  settled  all  questions  by  elevating  disputed  opinions 
into  indubitable  principles.  It  could  thus  be  authoritatively 
taught  to  adolescent  minds,  and  students  could  readily  recite  on 
it.  Unfortunately,  however,  philosophy  does  not  thrive  under 
the  rod  of  authority;  and  in  spite  of  many  acute  minds  like 
Bowen,  Mahan,  Bledsoe,  or  Tappan,  or  powerful  minds  like 
Shedd  and  Hickok, 3  American  philosophy  before  the  Civil  War 
produced  not  a  single  original  philosophic  work  of  commanding 
importance.  To  the  modern  reader  it  is  all  an  arid  desert  of  com 
monplace  opinion  covered  with  the  dust  of  pedantic  language. 
The  storm  which  broke  the  stagnant  air  and  aroused  many 
American  minds  from  this  dogmatic  torpor  came  with  the 
controversy  over  evolution  which  followed  the  publication  of 
Lyell's  Geology,  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  and  Spencer's  First 
Principles.  The  evolutionary  philosophy  was  flanked  on  the 

1  See  Book  I,  Chap.  iv. 

1  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Jefferson  was  converted  to  it  by  Stewart. 

J  Soldier,  lawyer,  minister,  publicist,  and  editor,  as  well  as  professor  of  ma 
thematics,  Albert  T.  Bledsoe  deserves  to  be  better  known.  His  Philosophy  of 
Mathematics  is  still  worth  reading.  So  also  is  Shedd 's  Philosophy  of  History, 
which  illustrates  the  independence  of  the  evolutionary  conception  of  history 
from  the  thought  of  Spencer  or  Darwin.  For  sheer  intellectual  power,  however, 
and  for  comprehensive  grasp  of  technical  philosophy  Hickok  is  easily  the  foremost 
figure  in  American  philosophy  between  the  time  of  Jonathan  Edwards  and  the 
period  of  the  Civil  War.  He  left,  however,  no  influential  disciples  except  Presi 
dents  Seeley  and  Bascom. 


23<>  Later  Philosophy 

left  by  the  empirical  or  positivistic  philosophy  of  Comte,  Mill, 
Lewes,  Buckle,  and  Bain,  and  on  the  right  by  the  dialectic 
evolutionism  of  Hegel.  The  work  of  John  Fiske,  the  leader  of 
the  evolutionary  host,  of  Chauncey  Wright,  who  nobly  repre 
sented  scientific  empiricism,  and  of  William  T.  Harris,  the 
saintly  and  practical  minded  Hegelian,  united  to  give  American 
philosophy  a  wider  basis.  With  these  the  history  of  the  modern 
period  of  American  philosophy  begins. 

To  understand  the  profound  revolution  in  religious  and 
philosophic  thought  caused  by  the  advent  of  the  hypothesis  of 
organic  evolution,  we  must  remember  that  natural  history  was, 
after  Paley ,  an  integral  part  of  American  theology.  The  current 
religious  philosophy  rested  very  largely  on  what  were  then  called 
the  evidences  of  design  in  the  organic  world ;  and  the  theory  of 
natural  selection  rendered  all  these  arguments  futile.  The  mass 
of  geologic  and  biologic  evidence  marshalled  with  such  skill  and 
transparent  honesty  by  Darwin  proved  an  overwhelming  blow 
against  those  who  accepted  the  biblical  account  of  the  creation 
of  man  and  of  animals  as  literal  history.  Modern  physical 
science  had  dispossessed  theology  from  its  proud  position  as  the 
authoritative  source  of  truth  on  astronomic  questions.  If,  then, 
the  biblical  account  of  creation  and  its  specific  declaration, 
"According  to  their  kind  created  He  them,"  were  to  be  dis 
regarded,  could  Protestant  Christianity,  relying  on  the  author 
ity  of  the  Bible,  survive  ?  These  fears  for  the  safety  of  religion 
proved  groundless,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  evolutionary 
movement  profoundly  shook  the  position  of  theology  and  theo 
logians.  Not  only  was  the  intellectual  eminence  of  our  theo 
logians  seriously  damaged  in  the  eyes  of  the  community  as  a 
result  of  the  controversy,  but  theology  was  profoundly  altered 
by  the  evolutionary  philosophy.  As  a  religious  doctrine  the 
latter  was  in  effect  a  revival  of  an  older  deism,  according  to 
which  the  world  was  the  manifestation  of  an  immanent  Power 
expressing  itself  in  general  laws  revealed  by  natural  reason  and 
experience,  instead  of  being  specially  created  and  governed  by 
divine  interventions  or  occasional  miracles  revealed  to  us  by 
supernatural  authority. 

In  the  realm  of  pure  philosophy  Spencer  and  his  disciple 
Fiske  brought  no  new  ideas  of  any  importance.  Their  doctrine 
of  the  relativity  of  human  knowledge  was  a  common  possession 


The  Evolutionary  Philosophy  231 

of  both  English  and  Scottish  writers,  and  their  agnosticism, 
based  on  our  supposed  inability  to  know  the  infinite,  had  been 
common  coin  since  the  days  of  Kant.  But  the  idea  of  universal 
evolution  or  development,  though  as  old  as  Greek  philosophy 
and  fully  exploited  in  all  departments  of  human  thought  by 
Hegel,  received  a  most  impressive  popular  impetus  from  the 
work  of  Darwin  and  Spencer,  and  stirred  the  popular  imagina 
tion  as  few  intellectual  achievements  had  done  since  the  rise  of 
the  Copernican  astronomy.  Just  as  the  displacement  of  man's 
abode  as  the  centre  of  the  universe  led  by  way  of  compensation 
to  a  modern  idealism  which  said  "The  whole  cosmos  is  in  our 
mind,"  so  the  discovery  of  man's  essential  kinship  with  brute 
creation  led  to  the  renewal  of  an  idealistic  philosophy  which 
made  human  development  and  perfection  the  end  of  the  cosmic 
process  travailing  through  the  aeons.  Thus,  instead  of  doing 
away  with  all  teleology,  the  evolutionary  philosophy  itself 
became  a  teleology,  replacing  bleak  Calvinism  with  the  warm, 
rosy  outlook  of  a  perpetual  and  universal  upward  progress. 

This  absorption  of  the  evolutionary  philosophy  by  theology 
is  clearly  brought  out  in  the  works  of  John  Fiske  (1842-1901). 
In  his  main  philosophic  work,  the  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy, 
which  he  delivered  as  lectures  in  Harvard  in  1869-71,  he  fol 
lowed  Spencer  so  closely  in  his  agnosticism  and  opposition  to 
anthropomorphic  theism  that  he  brought  down  the  wrath  of  the 
orthodox  and  made  a  permanent  position  for  himself  in  the 
department  of  philosophy  at  Harvard  impossible.  Yet  his  own 
cosmic  theism  and  his  attempt  to  reconcile  the  existence  of  evil 
with  that  of  a  benevolent,  omnipotent,  quasi-psychical  Power 
should  have  shown  discerning  theologians  that  here  was  a  pre 
cious  ally.  In  his  later  writings  Fiske,  though  never  expressly 
withdrawing  his  earlier  argument  that  the  ideas  of  personality 
and  infinity  are  incompatible,  did  emphasize  more  and  more 
the  personality  of  God ;  and  his  original  contrast  between  cosmic 
and  anthropomorphic  theism  reduced  itself  to  a  contrast  between 
the  immanent  theology  of  Athanasius  and  the  transcendent 
theology  of  St.  Augustine.  By  making  man's  spiritual  develop 
ment  the  goal  of  the  whole  evolutionary  process,  Fiske  replaced 
man  in  his  old  position  as  head  of  the  universe  even  as  in  the 
days  of  Dante  and  Aquinas. 

What  primarily  attracted  Fiske  to  the  evolutionary  philo- 


Later  Philosophy 

sophy  was  precisely  that  which  made  that  philosophy  so  popu 
lar,  the  easy  way  in  which  it  could  serve  as  a  universal  key  to 
open  up  a  comprehensive  view  on  every  subject  of  human  in 
terest.  Despite  his  services  to  popular  science,  Fiske  was  not 
himself  a  scientific  investigator.  His  knowledge  of  biology  was 
second-hand,  neither  extensive  nor  very  accurate,  and  even  less 
can  be  said  about  his  knowledge  of  physics.  But  he  was  widely 
read  in  history,  in  which  he  was  always  primarily  interested. 
The  evolutionary  philosophy  appealed  to  him  above  all  as  a 
clue  to  the  tangled,  complicated  mass  of  facts  that  constitutes 
human  history.  Like  Buckle,  Fiske  wanted  to  eliminate  the  mar 
vellous  or  catastrophic  view  of  history  and  reduce  it  to  simple 
laws.  In  his  historic  writings,  however,  he  does  not  seem  to  have 
used  the  evolutionary  philosophy  to  throw  new  light  on  past 
events,  and  in  his  actual  historic  representation  his  dramatic 
instinct  gave  full  scope  to  the  part  of  great  men,  to  issues  of 
battles,  and  to  like  incidents. x 

The  extent  to  which  Fiske  as  a  philosopher  was  dominated 
by  traditional  views  is  best  seen  when  we  ask  for  the  ethical 
and  political  teaching  of  his  evolutionary  philosophy.  Only  a 
few  pages  of  the  Cosmic  Philosophy  are  devoted  to  this  topic, 
and  the  results  do  not  in  any  respect  rise  above  the  common 
place.  He  naively  accepts  the  crude  popular  analysis  which 
makes  morality  synonymous  with  yielding  to  the  "  dictates  of 
sympathy"  instead  of  to  the  "dictates  of  selfishness."  The 
conception  of  evolution  as  consisting  of  slow,  imperceptible 
changes— thus  ignoring  all  saltations  or  mutations — is  made  to 
support  the  ordinary  conservative  aversion  for  radical  change. 
The  philosophy  of  Voltaire  and  the  encyclopaedists  is  sweepingly 
condemned  as  socially  subversive;  and  against  Comte  it  is 
maintained  that  society  cannot  be  organized  on  the  basis  of 
scientific  philosophy,  not  even  the  evolutionary  philosophy. 
Statesmen  should  study  history,  but  men  cannot  be  taught  the 
higher  state  of  civilization;  they  can  only  be  bred  in  it.  Just 
how  the  latter  process  is  to  take  place  we  are  not  told.  Fiske 
left  nothing  of  a  theory  of  education.2  He  belittles  the  im 
portance  of  social  institutions  and  concludes  by  making  social 

1  For  his  historical  writings  see  Book  III,  Chap.  xv. 

2  His  important  aper$u  as  to  the  significance  of  prolonged  infancy  as  the  basis 
of  civilization  relates  to  his  theory  of  social  and  moral  evolution. 


John  Fiske  233 

salvation  depend  upon  a  change  of  heart  in  individual  men — 
quite  in  the  tradition  of  the  Protestant  theology  which  he  had 
inherited. 

Fiske  was  not  an  original  or  a  logically  rigorous  thinker,  and 
his  knowledge  of  the  history  of  science  and  philosophy  was  by 
no  means  adequate;  but  he  was  a  remarkably  lucid,  vigorous, 
and  engaging  writer  who  had  no  fear  of  repeating  the  same 
point.  His  Cosmic  Philosophy  went  through  sixteen  editions, 
and  this,  as  well  as  his  other  books,  which  sold  by  the  thousands, 
undoubtedly  exerted  wide  influence.  Thus  he  greatly  aided  the 
spread  of  the  Berkeleian  argument  that  all  wre  know  of  matter  is 
states  of  consciousness,  and  at  the  same  time  of  the  argument 
(really  inconsistent  with  this)  for  a  psychical  parallelism  ac 
cording  to  which  matter  and  mind  form  parallel  streams  of 
causality  without  one  causing  the  other.  But  above  all,  he 
made  fashionable  the  evolutionary  myth  according  to  which 
everything  has  a  function,  evolves,  and  necessarily  passes 
through  certain  stages.  Thus  he  also  introduced  a  new  intel 
lectual  orthodoxy  according  to  which  the  elect  pride  themselves 
on  following  the  "dynamic"  rather  than  the  "static"  point  of 
view. 

The  pietistic  philosophy  which  gained  complete  control  of 
the  American  college  and  of  dominant  public  opinion  did  not 
completely  break  all  communication  between  America  and 
foreign  liberal  thought  as  represented  by  Comte,  Fourier,  and 
even  Proudhon,  or  by  Bentham,  Grote,  and  Mill.  Even  the 
arch-skeptic  Hume  continued  to  be  reprinted  in  this  country; 
and  the  vitality  of  the  sensualistic  or  quasi-materialistic  tradi 
tion  in  the  medical  profession  is  evidenced  by  James  Rush's 
Analysis  of  the  Human  Intellect  (1865).  Despite,  however,  the 
presence  with  us  of  men  of  such  first-rate  scientific  eminence 
as  Joseph  Henry,  Benjamin  Peirce,  or  Nathaniel  Bowditch, 
scientific  thought  was  not  sufficiently  organized  to  demand  a 
philosophy  more  in  consonance  with  its  own  procedure.  Even 
in  Great  Britain,  where  science  was  earlier  and  better  organized 
by  means  of  the  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science 
(1832),  Mill's  effort  to  revive  and  continue  Hume's  attempt 
to  introduce  the  experimental  method  of  natural  sciences  into 
mental  and  moral  questions  found  acceptance  very  slowly. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  life  Mill  testified  that  for  one  British 


234  Later  Philosophy 

philosopher  who  believed  in  the  experimental  method  twenty 
were  followers  of  the  a  priori  method.  Empiricism  was  cer 
tainly  not  the  dominant  characteristic  of  Anglo-Saxon  thought 
in  the  period  when  Coleridge,  Hamilton,  and  Whewell  were  in 
the  foreground.  Slowly  the  scientific  mode  of  thought  spread, 
however,  and  found  in  Mill's  Logic  its  most  convenient  for 
mulation.  Chauncey  Wright  (1830-75),  a  computer  for  the 
Nautical  Almanac  who  had  made  important  contributions  to 
mathematics  and  physics,  had,  like  most  of  the  thinking  men  of 
his  day,  been  brought  up  on  Hamilton.  But  his  reading  of  Mill 
converted  Wright  completely;  and  while  never  a  disciple  of  Mill 
to  the  extent  that  Fiske  was  of  Spencer,  he  was  in  a  fair  way  to 
re-enforce  and  develop  Mill's  logic  in  a  most  original  manner 
when  an  untimely  death  cut  him  off.  All  his  papers,  published 
mostly  in  The  North  American  Review  (1864-73),  fill  only  one 
volume.  But  if  the  test  of  a  philosopher  be  intellectual  keen 
ness  and  persistent  devotion  to  the  truth  rather  than  skill  in 
making  sweeping  generalizations  plausible,  Chauncey  Wright 
deserves  a  foremost  place  in  American  philosophy.  Unlike 
Fiske,  Wright  knew  at  first  hand  the  technique  of  biologic  as 
well  as  mathematical  and  physical  research,  and  his  contribu 
tion  to  the  discussion  of  natural  selection  was  highly  valued  by 
Darwin.  But  he  rejects  the  evolutionary  philosophy  of  Spen 
cer,  not  only  because  of  its  inadequate  grasp  of  modern  physics, 
nor  merely  because,  like  all  cosmogonic  philosophies,  it  goes 
beyond  the  bounds  of  known  fact,  but  primarily  because  it  is 
metaphysical,  that  is,  it  deals  with  the  general  laws  of  physics 
as  abstract  elements  out  of  which  a  picture  of  the  universe  is 
to  be  drawn.  To  draw  such  a  picture  of  the  universe  is  a  part 
of  religion  and  of  poetic  or  myth-making  art.  It  does  not  be 
long  to  science.  For  whenever  we  go  beyond  the  limited  body 
of  observed  fact  we  order  things  according  to  our  imagination 
and  inevitably  develop  a  cosmos  as  if  it  were  an  epic  poem,  with  a 
beginning,  middle,  and  end.  The  scientist,  according  to  Wright, 
is  interested  in  a  general  law  like  gravitation  not  as  a  descrip 
tion  of  the  cosmos,  but  rather  as  a  means  for  extending  his 
knowledge  of  a  field  of  concrete  fact.  Metaphysics  speculated 
about  universal  gravitation  before  Newton.  What  Newton 
found  was  a  law  which  enabled  him  to  deduce  the  facts  of  the 
solar  system  and  led  to  the  discovery  of  many  more  facts  which 


Chauncey  Wright  235 

would  not  otherwise  have  come  to  light, — the  existence  of  the 
planet  Neptune,  for  instance.  If  the  philosopher  wishes  to  be 
scientific,  let  him  discipline  himself  by  carrying  on  an  original 
investigation  in  some  department  of  empirical  science  so  as  to 
gain  a  clear  idea  how  knowledge  is  actually  used  as  a  basis  for 
discovering  new  truths.  Anticipating  the  instrumentalism  of 
Dewey,  as  well  as  the  pragmatism  of  James,  Wright  points  out 
that  the  principles  of  modern  mathematical  and  physical  phi 
losophy  are  rather  the  eyes  with  which  nature  is  seen  than 
the  elements  and  constitution  of  the  object  discovered,  that 
general  laws  are  finders,  not  merely  summaries  of  truth. 

Wright  does  not  underestimate  the  value  of  religious  or 
metaphysical  philosophies,  though  they  may  be  full  of  vague 
ideas,  crude  fancies,  and  unverified  convictions;  for  they  "con 
stitute  more  of  human  happiness  and  human  wealth  than  the  nar 
row  material  standards  of  science  have  been  able  to  measure." 
But  scientific  philosophy  must  be  clearly  distinguished  from 
these.  The  motives  of  science  arise  in  rational  curiosity  or 
wonder,  while  religious  and  metaphysical  philosophies  arise 
from  the  desire — not  to  discover  new  truths  but — to  defend  our 
emotional  and  vital  preferences  by  exhibiting  them  as  entirely 
free  from  inconsistency.  Logical  refutation  of  every  opposing 
philosophy  affords  us  satisfaction  but  does  not  convince  our 
opponents;  because  the  choice  of  ultimate  metaphysical  dog 
mas  is  a  matter  of  character  (or  temperament,  as  James  later 
said)  and  not  of  logic. 

Wright's  own  choice,  which  he  does  not  pretend  to  demon 
strate,  is  for  the  view  attributed  to  Aristotle,  that  creation  is 
not  a  progression  toward  a  single  end,  but  rather  an  endless 
succession  of  changes,  simple  and  constant  in  their  elements, 
though  infinite  in  their  combinations,  which  constitute  an  order 
without  beginning  and  without  termination.  This  distinction 
between  elements  and  their  combination  enabled  him  to  unite 
the  belief  in  the  universality  of  physical  causation  which  is  the 
scientist's  protection  against  the  refined  superstitions  of  teleo 
logy  with  the  Aristotelian  belief  in  accidents  which  keeps  the 
scientist  from  erecting  his  discoveries  into  metaphysical  dogmas. 
Scientific  research  must  postulate  the  universality  of  the  causal 
relation  between  elementary  facts  and  cannot  make  use  of  any 
teleology,  since  there  is  no  scientific  test  for  distinguishing 


236  Later  Philosophy 

which  facts  are  ends  and  which  are  only  means.  But  there  is  no 
evidence  that  any  law  like  that  of  gravity  is  absolutely  exact 
or  more  than  approximately  true  or  that  it  holds  beyond  the 
observable  stars.  The  inductive  or  empirical  character  of  the 
actual  laws  of  science  explains  the  reality  of  accidents  or  pheno 
mena  which  could  not  have  been  predicted  from  any  finite 
human  knowledge  of  their  antecedents.  The  rise  of  self -con 
sciousness,  the  use  of  the  voice  as  a  means  of  communication, 
or  the  properties  of  new  chemical  combinations,  all  illustrate 
phenomena  which  are  subject  to  law  yet  unpredictable.  Though 
life  is  subject  to  the  law  of  conservation  of  energy,  nothing 
characteristic  of  life  can  be  deduced  from  such  a  law. 

Wright's  penetrating  and  well-founded  reflections  on  the 
nature  of  scientific  method  did  not  attract  widespread  atten 
tion.  The  vast  majority  come  to  philosophy  to  find  or  to  con 
firm  some  simple  "scheme  of  things  entire. "  And  though  all 
scientists  are  empirical  in  their  own  field,  most  of  them  demand 
some  absolute  finality  when  they  come  to  philosophy.  Wright's 
profound  modesty  and  austere  self-control  in  the  presence  of 
glittering  and  tempting  generalizations  and  his  willingness  to 
live  in  a  world  subject  to  the  uncertainties  of  "cosmic  weather" 
will  never  attract  more  than  a  few.  But  the  character  of  his 
thought,  though  rare,  is  nevertheless  indicative  of  a  tendency 
toward  the  scientific  philosophy,  the  negative  side  of  which  was 
more  crudely  and  more  popularly  represented  by  Draper's 
History  of  the  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe  (1862) x  and  in 
many  articles  in  The  Popular  Science  Monthly.  But  at  least 
two  great  American  philosophers  were  directly  and  profoundly 
influenced  by  Chauncey  Wright,  and  those  were  Charles  Peirce 
and  William  James. 

To  the  modern  reader  the  writings  of  William  T.  Harris- 
even  his  last  and  most  finished  book,  Psychologic  Foundations 
of  Education  (1898) — sound  rather  obsolete  and  somewhat 
mechanical.  But  the  position  of  the  author,  who  from  1867 
to  1910  was  regarded  as  the  intellectual  leader  of  the  educa 
tional  profession  in  the  United  States,  who  for  over  twenty-five 
years  edited  The  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy,  and  who 
was  the  chief  organizer  of  the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy, 2 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xv. 

3  The  Concord  School,  of  which  Alcott  was  the  nominal  head  and  Harris  the 


William  T.  Harris  237 

gave  his  writings  an  amount  of  influence  far  beyond  what 
the  reader  might  expect.  Sweetly  generous,  devout,  and  en 
terprising,  Harris  was  an  ideal  apostle  of  philosophy  to  the 
American  people,  calling  upon  them  to  enter  the  world's  great 
intellectual  heritage  and  assuring  them  that  the  truths  of  religion 
— God,  freedom,  and  immortality — have  always  been  best  pro 
tected  by  true  philosophy  and  are  in  no  need  of  the  ill-advised 
guardians  who,  by  discouraging  free  inquiry,  transform  religion 
into  fetishism. 

Just  as  the  work  of  Chauncey  Wright  may  be  summarized 
in  its  attack  on  the  pretentiousness  and  inadequate  scientific 
basis  of  the  Spencerian  evolutionary  philosophy,  so  the  work 
of  William  T.  Harris  may  be  summed  up  as  an  attack  against 
agnosticism.  On  its  psychologic  side  Harris's  argument  is 
directed  against  Spencer's  assumption  (directly  derived  from 
Sir  William  Hamilton)  that  we  cannot  conceive  the  infinite. 
Against  this  Harris  clearly  points  out  that  Hamilton  and  Spen 
cer  are  confusing  the  process  of  conception  and  the  process  of 
imagination.  It  is  true  that  we  cannot  form  a  picture  or  an 
image  of  the  infinite,  but  neither  can  we  form  an  image  of  any 
motion  or  process  as  such.  This,  however,  need  not  prevent  us 
from  grasping  or  conceiving  any  universal  process  of  which  the 
imagination  fixes  the  dead  static  result  at  any  moment.  On 
the  objective  side  Harris  reaches  the  same  result  by  the  dialectic 
argument  that  the  finite  particular  cannot  be  the  ultimate 
reality.  Particular  things  are  given  in  sense  perception,  but 
the  scientific  understanding  shows  us  that  every  object  depends 
on  other  things  to  make  it  what  it  is ;  everything  depends  upon 
an  environment.  Science  in  its  development  must  thus  em 
phasize  dynamic  processes,  and  its  highest  point  is  reached  in 
the  discovery  of  the  correlation  of  all  forces.  But  the  moment 
we  begin  to  reason  as  to  the  nature  of  these  processes  or  activi 
ties,  we  are  inevitably  led  to  the  idea  of  self-activity ;  for  since 
every  finite  object  gets  its  activity  from  some  other  object,  the 
ultimate  source  of  all  activity  must  be  that  which  is  not  limited 
by  something  else,  and  that  is  an  infinite  or  self -limited  Ac 
tivity.  Thus  the  stages  of  sense-perception,  understanding, 

directing  genius,  thus  represented  the  union  of  New  England  transcendentalism 
with  Germanic  scholarship  and  idealism.  As  such  its  history  is  a  significant 
incident  in  the  intellectual  life  of  America. 


Later  Philosophy 

and  reason  lead  to  atomism  or  materialism,  pantheism,  and 
theism  respectively. 

With  the  simplicity  that  comes  from  undiluted  sincerity, 
Harris  repeats  this  argument  over  and  over  again,  finding  in  it 
the  clue  to  fruitful  insight  in  all  fields  of  human  interest.  It  is 
the  weapon  with  which  he  refutes  all  empiricism,  which  bases 
truth  on  the  knowledge  of  particulars.  All  such  philosophy,  he 
says,  stops  at  the  stage  of  understanding  and  fails  to  note  that 
a  particular  fact  possesses  whatever  unity  or  character  it  has 
only  in  virtue  of  some  universal.  Time,  space,  and  causality 
cannot,  therefore,  be  derived  from  particular  experiences,  but 
are,  as  Kant  maintained,  the  a  priori  conditions  of  all  experience. 

In  social  philosophy  Harris  follows  Hegel  rather  closely  with 
a  characteristic  New  England  emphasis  on  the  freedom  of  the 
will.  Thus  the  state  is  "a  social  unit  in  which  the  individual 
exists  not  for  himself,  but  for  the  use  of  that  unit" ;  but  social 
order  is  not  to  be  secured  by  external  authority,  but  by  free 
choice.  Like  his  master,  Hegel,  Harris  intellectualizes  religion 
and  art,  the  function  of  both  being  to  reveal  ultimate  or  philo 
sophic  truth,  religion  in  the  form  of  dogmatic  faith,  art  by  sen 
suous  representation  which  "piques  the  soul  to  ascend  out  of 
the  stage  of  sense  perception  into  reflection  and  free  thought." 

Like  all  Hegelians  and  most  believers  in  the  adequacy  of 
one  system,  Harris  frequently  thinks  he  has  gained  insight 
when  he  has  translated  a  fact  into  his  own  terminology T ;  and 
the  allegoric  method  of  interpreting  works  of  art  and  great 
literary  masterpieces,  notably  Dante's  Divine  Comedy  and 
Goethe's  Faust,  easily  lent  itself  to  that  result.  Still  the  general 
result  of  Harris's  theoretic  as  well  as  his  practical  activity  was 
undoubtedly  to  broaden  the  basis  and  subject  matter  of  Ameri 
can  philosophy.  His  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy  (1867- 
93)  the  first  journal  in  the  English  language  devoted  exclusively 
to  philosophy,  made  the  thought  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  as  well 
as  that  of  the  German  philosophers  accessible  to  American 
readers.  When  it  was  objected  that  America  needed  something 
more  original,  he  justly  replied  that  an  originality  which 
cherished  its  own  idiosyncrasies  was  despicable.  His  convic- 

1  Harris,  for  instance,  believed  that  he  found  a  new  insight  into  the  nature 
of  light  when  he  characterized  it  as  "a  point  making  itself  valid  outside  of  itself. " 
See  a  similar  account  of  gravity,  in  Psychologic  Foundations  of  Education,  p.  22. 


Philosophy  in  the  Colleges  239 

tion  that  a  worthy  originality  can  come  only  through  deep 
acquaintance  with  the  best  of  ancient  and  modern  thought 
stands  justified  by  at  least  one  fact.  The  most  original  Ameri 
can  thinkers,  Peirce,  Royce,  James,  and  Dewey,  were  also  the 
most  learned,  and  their  first  philosophic  papers  appeared  in 
The  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy. 

The  general  spread  of  the  evolutionary  theory,  popular 
science,  and  more  accurate  historical  acquaintance  with  Euro 
pean  thought  affected  the  American  colleges  only  very  slowly. 
An  examination  of  the  catalogues  of  American  colleges  will 
bear  out  the  picture  of  dismal  unenlightenment  which  Stanley 
Hall  drew  in  1879  of  the  state  of  philosophic  teaching.1  The 
beginning  of  a  better  order  of  things  may  be  dated  from  the 
election  of  a  layman,  Charles  W.  Eliot,  as  President  of  Harvard 
College  in  1869  or  from  the  introduction  of  post-graduate 
instruction  at  Johns  Hopkins  in  1 876.  As  the  American  colleges 
began  to  expand  and  as  training  for  the  educational  profession 
became  an  important  consideration,  teachers  of  philosophy  and 
psychology  began  to  be  selected  with  some  regard  for  pro 
fessional  training  and  competency  rather  than  exclusively  for 
piety  or  pastoral  experience.  Such  professional  training  an 
increasing  number  obtained  in  Germany,  where,  if  they  did  not 
always  get  much  fresh  wisdom,  they  did  generally  learn  the 
meaning  of  scientific  accuracy  in  experimental  psychology  and 
philologic  accuracy  in  the  history  of  philosophy.  It  was  through 
men  of  this  class  that  the  idealistic  philosophy  of  Kant  and 
Hegel  was  introduced  into  the  American  colleges.2  In  this 
they  were  aided  by  the  spread  of  German  idealism  in  the  Eng 
lish  and  Scottish  universities,  which  found  expression  in  the 
works  of  J.  F.  Ferrier,  Hutchison  Stirling,  F.  H.  Bradley,  T.  H. 
Green,  Bosanquet,  John  and  Edward  Caird,  Mahaffy,  and 
William  Wallace. 

The  definitive  triumph  of  the  idealistic  movement  may  be 
dated  from  the  founding  in  1892  of  The  Philosophical  Review  un 
der  the  editorship  of  Jacob  Gould  Schurman  and  James  Edwin 

1  Mind,  vol.  iv,  1879.  Professor  Gildersleeve  of  Johns  Hopkins  has  testified 
that  in  his  youth  positions  as  college  teachers  were  generally  given  to  those  who 
had  failed  in  missionary  work  abroad. 

3  Typical  of  this  class  was  G.  S.  Morris,  Professor  of  Philosophy  at  Johns  Hop 
kins,  translator  of  tiberweg's  History  of  Philosophy,  and  editor  of  a  series  of  ex 
positions  of  German  philosophic  classics  by  Dewey,  Watson,  Harris,  and  Everett. 


24<>  Later  Philosophy 

Creighton.  As  this  review  has  always  been  open  to  scholarly 
contributions  in  all  the  various  fields  of  philosophy,  the  char 
acter  of  its  contributions  during  its  first  decade  bears  ample 
evidence  to  the  complete  dominance  of  the  Kantian  and  He 
gelian  idealism.  The  old  Scottish  philosophy  could  not  hold 
its  own  before  the  superior  finesse  and  technical  equipment  of 
the  new  school.  *  At  bottom,  too,  it  realized  the  necessity  of  an 
alliance  with  the  new  rationalistic  philosophy  in  the  fight  for  a 
theistic  and  spiritual  view  of  the  world  against  scientific  posi 
tivism  and  popular  materialism.  At  Harvard  Francis  Bowen 
continued  for  many  years  to  oppose  dialectic  Hegelianism  as 
well  as  the  "mind  philosophy"  of  the  British  empiricists;  but 
his  assistant  and  successor,  the  gentle  and  classical  minded  G. 
H.  Palmer,  turned  in  the  main  to  the  Hegelian  idealism  intro 
duced  at  Harvard  in  1869  by  C.  C.  Everett.  At  Princeton 
James  McCosh,  the  leader  of  the  Scottish  school,  poured  forth  an 
interminable  list  of  books  defending  common-sense  realism  and 
attacking  without  excessive  refinements  all  its  opponents,  includ 
ing  the  Hegelians  with  their ' '  thinking  in  trinities. ' '  But  most  of 
his  attention  had  to  be  devoted  to  rendering  the  new  evolutionary 
philosophy  harmless  to  the  cause  of  orthodoxy.  His  successor, 
Ormond,  so  expanded  the  realism  of  his  master  with  Berkeleian 
and  Kantian  elements  as  to  make  it  lose  its  historic  identity. 
A  similar  development  took  place  at  Yale.  Noah  Porter  had 
studied  in  Germany  under  Trendelenburg,  and  his  great  text 
book  on  The  Human  Mind  (1868)  showed  a  painstaking,  if  not 
a  penetrating,  knowledge  of  Herbart,  Lotze,  and  Wundt  as  well 
as  of  the  British  empiricists.  But  he  remained  substantially  an 
adherent  of  a  Scottish  intuitive  philosophy.  Like  McCosh, 
but  with  greater  urbanity,  he  directed  his  energy  mainly  against 
popular  agnosticism  and  materialism.  His  pupil  and  successor, 
George  Trumbull  Ladd,  while  professing  to  be  eclectic  and  in 
dependent,  follows  in  the  main  the  method  of  Lotze,2  and  in  the 

1  This  increased  technical  interest  necessarily  led  philosophy  to  become  less 
popular  and  somewhat  more  narrow  in  its  aims.  Hence  popular  thought  came 
to  draw  its  inspiration  either  from  the  vague  but  sweeping  generalizations  of 
Spencer  or  other  popularizers  of  science,  or  from  mystic  culture — theosophy, 
spiritualism,  or  "new  thought" — which  except  in  the  writings  of  Horatio  Dresser 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  philosophy  treated  in  this  chapter. 

3  A  more  direct  follower  of  Lotze  was  Borden  P.  Bowne,  one  of  the  keenest 
of  American  metaphysicians. 


Charles  S.  Peirce  241 

end  bases  his  spiritualistic  metaphysics  on  epistemology  quite  in 
the  Kantian  fashion.  A  leader  in  the  introduction  of  modern 
physiologic  psychology  into  this  country,  Ladd  stands  for  a  phi 
losophy  that  criticizes  the  procedures  and  fundamental  ideas  of 
the  special  sciences.  But  his  primary  interest  in  philosophy  is 
to  make  better  Christian  citizens.  His  idealism  is  a  branch  of 
modern  Christian  apologetics,  justifying  the  ways  of  God  and 
defending  the  church  and  the  established  moral  and  social 
order. 

Its  most  distinguished  and  also  its  most  influential  leader 
the  idealistic  school  found  in  Josiah  Royce  at  Harvard.  To 
understand  his  development,  however,  we  must  first  take  some 
note  of  Charles  S.  Peirce. 

If  philosophic  eminence  were  measured  not  by  the  number 
of  finished  treatises  of  dignified  length  but  by  the  extent  to 
which  a  man  brought  forth  new  and  fruitful  ideas  of  radical 
importance,  then  Charles  S.  Peirce  (1840-1914)  would  easily  be 
the  greatest  figure  in  American  philosophy.  Unrivalled  in  his 
wide  and  thorough  knowledge  of  the  methods  and  history  of  the 
exact  sciences  (logic,  mathematics,  and  physics),  he  was  also 
endowed  with  the  bountiful  but  capricious  originality  of  genius. 
Few  are  the  genuine  contributions  of  America  to  philosophy  of 
which  the  germinal  idea  is  not  to  be  found  in  some  of  his  stray 
papers. 

Peirce  was  too  restless  a  pioneer  or  explorer  to  be  able  to 
settle  down  and  imitate  the  great  masters  who  build  complete 
systems  like  stately  palaces  towering  to  the  moon.  He  was 
rather  of  those  who  are  always  trying  to  penetrate  the  jungle 
that  surrounds  our  patch  of  cultivated  science;  and  his  writ 
ings  are  all  rough,  cryptic  sketches  of  new  fields,  without  much 
regard  to  the  limitations  of  the  human  understanding,  so  that 
James  found  his  lectures  on  pragmatism  "flashes  of  brilliant 
light  against  Cimmerian  darkness. "  Overt  departure  from  the 
conventional  moral  code  and  inability  to  work  in  harness  made 
it  impossible  for  Peirce  to  keep  any  permanent  academic  posi 
tion,  and  thus  he  was  deprived  of  a  needed  incentive  to  intelli 
gibility  and  to  ordinary  consistency.  Intellectual  pioneers  are 
rarely  gregarious  creatures.  In  their  isolation  they  lose  touch 
with  those  who  follow  the  beaten  paths,  and  when  they  return 
to  the  community  they  speak  strangely  of  strange  sights,  so 

VOL.  Ill  — 16 


Later  Philosophy 

that  few  have  the  faith  to  follow  them  and  change  their  trails 
into  high  roads.  Peirce  was  fortunate  in  that  two  powerful 
minds,  Josiah  Royce  and  William  James,  were  able  to  follow 
some  of  the  directions  from  his  Pisgah  heights  and  thus  take 
possession  of  rich  philosophic  domains.  What  further  gains 
philosophy  might  make  by  developing  other  of  his  numerous 
suggestive  ideas,  is  not  an  affair  of  history.  We  may  note, 
however,  that  in  our  own  day  the  field  of  mathematical  logic 
which  he  developed  has  become  the  ground  which  supports  our 
latest  philosophic  movement,  neo-realism. 

Peirce  was  by  antecedents,  training,  and  occupation  a  scien 
tist.  A  son  of  Benjamin  Peirce,  the  great  mathematician,  he 
had  a  thorough  knowledge  of  pure  mathematics  and  of  modern 
laboratory  methods.  He  made  important  contributions  not 
only  to  mathematical  or  symbolic  logic  but  also  to  photometric 
astronomy,  geodesy,  and  psycho-physics,  as  well  as  to  philology. 
For  many  years  he  was  engaged  in  the  United  States  Coast  and 
Geodetic  Survey,  and  one  of  his  researches  on  the  pendulum 
received  unusual  attention  from  the  International  Geodetic 
Congress  to  which  he  was  the  first  American  delegate.  He 
was,  therefore,  predominantly  concerned  with  a  philosophy  of 
science. 

Science,  according  to  Peirce,  is  a  method  of  banishing  doubt 
and  arriving  at  stable  ideas.  Commonly  wefix  beliefs  by  reiterat 
ing  them,  by  surrounding  them  with  emotional  safeguards,  and 
by  avoiding  anything  which  casts  doubt  upon  them — by  "the 
will  to  believe."  This  method  breaks  down  when  the  com 
munity  ceases  to  be  homogeneous.  Social  effort,  by  the  method 
of  authority,  to  eliminate  diversity  of  beliefs  also  fails  in  the 
end  to  prevent  reflective  doubts  from  cropping  up.  Hence  we 
must  finally  resort  to  the  method  of  free  inquiry  and  let  science 
stabilize  our  ideas  by  clarifying  them.  How  can  this  be  done? 
Early  in  his  life  in  Cambridge  Peirce  came  under  the  personal 
influence  of  Chauncey  Wright,  and  in  a  little  club  of  which 
Wright  was  the  strongest  spirit  he  first  developed  the  doctrine 
of  pragmatism.  The  Newtonian  experimental  philosopher,  as 
Wright  had  pointed  out,  always  translates  general  propositions 
into  prescriptions  for  attaining  new  experimental  facts,  and 
this  led  Peirce  to  formulate  the  general  maxim  of  pragmatism 
that  the  meaning  of  any  concept  is  to  be  found  in  "all  the  con- 


Charles  S.  Peirce  243 

ceivable  experimental  phenomena  which  the  affirmation  or 
denial  of  a  concept  could  imply."1 

In  his  earlier  statements  of  the  pragmatic  maxim  Peirce2 
emphasized  the  consequences  for  conduct  that  follow  from  the 
acceptance  or  rejection  of  an  idea;  but  the  stoical  maxim  that 
the  end  of  man  is  action  did  not  appeal  to  him  as  much  at  sixty 
as  it  did  at  thirty.  Indeed,  if  we  want  to  clarify  the  meaning 
of  the  idea  of  pragmatism,  let  us  apply  the  pragmatic  maxim  to 
it.  What  will  be  the  effect  of  accepting  it?  Obviously  it  will 
be  to  develop  certain  general  ideas  or  habits  of  looking  at  things. 
As  Peirce  accepts  the  view  that  the  good  must  be  in  the  evolu 
tionary  process,  he  concludes  that  it  cannot  be  in  individual 
reactions  in  their  segregation,  but  rather  in  something  general 
or  continuous,  namely,  in  the  growth  of  concrete  reasonable 
ness,  ''becoming  governed  by  law,  becoming  instinct  with 
general  ideas."3  In  this  emphasis  on  general  ideas  Peirce's 
pragmatism  differs  sharply  from  that  of  his  follower,  James, 
who,  like  most  modern  psychologists,  was  a  thorough  nominalist 
and  always  emphasized  particular  sensible  experience.  Peirce's 
belief  in  the  reality  and  potency  of  general  ideas  was  connected 
in  his  mind  with  a  vast  philosophic  system  of  which  he  left  only 
some  fragmentary  outlines.4  He  called  it  synechistic  tychistic 
agapism  (from  the  Greek  words  for  continuity,  chance,  and 
love).  It  assumed  the  primacy  of  mind  and  chance  and  re 
garded  matter  and  law  as  the  result  of  habit.  The  principal 
law  of  mind  is  that  ideas  literally  spread  themselves  and  be 
come  more  general  or  inclusive,  so  that  people  who  form  com 
munities  or  churches  develop  distinct  general  ideas.  The 
nourishing  love  which  parents  have  for  their  children  or  thinkers 
for  their  own  ideas  is  the  creative  cause  of  evolution.  Stated 
thus  baldly  these  views  sound  fantastic.  But  Peirce  re-enforces 
them  with  such  a  wealth  of  illustration  from  modern  mathe 
matics  and  physics  as  to  make  them  extraordinarily  suggestive 
to  all  whose  minds  are  not  closed  against  new  ideas. 

Peirce  was  one  of  the  very  few  modern  scientific  thinkers 
to  lay  hands  on  that  sacred  cow  of  philosophy,  the  belief  that 

1  Monist,  vol.  xv,  p.  162.  *  Popular  Science  Monthly,  1878-9. 

3  These  phrases  (from  the  article  on  Pragmatism  in  Baldwin's  Dictionary  of 
Philosophy}  strongly  suggest  the  central  idea  of  Santayana's  philosophy,  but  the 
present  writer  does  not  know  whether  Santayana  was  ever  acquainted  with 
Peirce's  writings.  *  See  his  articles  in  the  Monist,  vols.  if  ii,  and  iii. 


244  Later  Philosophy 

everything  happens  absolutely  in  accordance  with  certain 
simple  eternal  laws.  He  was  too  well  acquainted  with  labora 
tory  methods  and  the  theory  of  probability  to  share  the  common 
belief  that  the  existence  of  such  universal  laws  is  demonstrated 
by  science.  "Try  to  verify  any  law  of  nature  and  you  will  find 
that  the  more  precise  your  observations,  the  more  certain  they 
will  be  to  show  irregular  departures  from  law. "  The  Platonic 
faith  that  nature  is  created  on  simple  geometric  lines  has  un 
doubtedly  been  a  powerful  weapon  against  those  who  would 
have  supernatural  interferences  interrupt  the  work  of  science. 
But  there  is  no  empirical  evidence  to  prevent  us  from  saying 
that  all  the  so-called  constants  of  nature  are  merely  instances 
of  variation  between  limits  so  near  each  other  that  their  differ 
ence  can  be  neglected  for  practical  purposes.  Impressed  by  the 
modern  theory  of  gases  and  the  statistical  view  of  nature  as 
developed  by  Willard  Gibbs  and  Maxwell,  and  perhaps  also 
influenced  by  Wright's  doctrine  as  to  "cosmic  weather, "  Peirce 
came  to  believe  in  the  primacy  of  chance.  What  we  call  law  is 
habit,  and  what  we  call  matter  is  inert  mind.  The  universe 
develops  from  a  chaos  of  feeling,  and  the  tendency  to  law  is  itself 
the  result  of  an  accidental  variation  which  has  grown  habitual 
with  things.  The  limiting  ratios  which  we  call  laws  of  nature 
are  thus  themselves  slowly  changing  in  time.  This  conception 
of  the  universe  growing  in  its  very  constitution  may  sound 
mythologic.  But  it  has  at  least  the  merit  of  an  empirically 
supported  rational  alternative  to  the  mechanical  mythology. 
In  many  respects  it  anticipated  the  philosophy  of  Bergson. 
In  the  hands  of  James  this  tychism  becomes  a  gospel  of  wonder 
ful  power  in  releasing  men  from  the  oppression  of  a  fixed  or 
"block  "  universe,  but  in  the  hands  of  Peirce  it  was  a  philosophic 
support  for  the  application  of  the  fruitful  theorems  of  scientific 
probability  to  all  walks  of  life. 

Unlike  most  of  America's  distinguished  philosophers,  Josiah 
Royce  (1855-1916)  was  not  brought  up  in  New  England. 
He  was  born  in  a  mining  town  in  California  and  received  his 
philosophic  education  in  the  university  of  his  own  state,  at 
Johns  Hopkins,  and  at  Gottingen,  where  he  studied  under 
Lotze.  Many  diverse  elements  stimulated  his  subtle  and  ac 
quisitive  mind  to  philosophic  reflection ;  the  theistic  evolution 
ism  of  the  geologist  Le  Conte,  the  fine  literary  spirit  of  E.  R. 


Josiah  Royce  245 

Sill,1  and  his  own  reading  of  Mill  and  Spencer  as  well  as  of 
the  great  German  philosophers,  Kant,  Schelling,  Hegel,  and 
Schopenhauer. 

In  1882  he  went  to  Harvard,  where  his  prodigious  learning, 
his  keen  and  catholic  appreciation  of  poetry,  and  the  biblical 
eloquence  with  which  he  expressed  a  rich  inner  experience,  at 
once  made  a  profound  impression.  His  singularly  pure  and 
loyal,  though  shy,  spirit  attracted  a  few  strong  friendships ;  but 
his  life  at  Cambridge  was  in  the  main  one  of  philosophic  de 
tachment.  As  a  citizen  of  the  great  intellectual  world,  however, 
he  closely  followed  its  multitudinous  events ;  and  his  successive 
books  only  partly  reflected  his  unusually  active  and  varied 
intellectual  interests.  In  his  earliest  published  papers  he  is 
inclined  to  follow  Kant  in  denying  the  possibility  of  ultimate 
metaphysical  solutions  except  by  ethical  postulates,  but  in  his 
first  book,  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy  (1885),  he  comes 
out  as  a  full-fledged  metaphysical  idealist.  This  brilliant  book 
at  once  made  a  profound  impression,  especially  with  the  argu 
ments  that  the  very  possibility  of  error  cannot  be  formulated 
except  in  terms  of  an  absolute  truth  or  rational  totality  which 
requires  an  absolute  knower.  Like  the  parts  of  a  sentence,  all 
things  find  their  condition  and  meaning  in  the  final  totality  to 
which  they  belong.  The  world  must  thus  be  either  through 
and  through  of  the  same  nature  as  our  mind,  or  else  be  utterly 
unknowable.  But  to  affirm  the  unknowable  is  to  involve  one's 
self  in  contradictions.  Royce  delights  in  these  sharp  antitheses 
and  the  reduction  of  opposing  arguments  to  contradictions. 

In  his  next  book,  an  unusually  eloquent  one  entitled  The 
Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy  (1892),  the  element  of  will  rather 
than  knowledge  receives  the  greater  emphasis.  The  Berkeleian 
analysis  of  the  world  as  composed  of  ideas  is  taken  for  granted, 
and  the  emphasis  is  rather  on  the  nature  of  the  World  Mind  or 
Logos.  Following  Schopenhauer,  he  points  out  that  even  in 
the  idealistic  view  of  the  world  there  is  an  irrational  element, 
namely,  the  brute  existence  of  just  this  kind  of  world.  The 
great  and  tragic  fact  of  experience  is  the  fact  of  effort  and 
passionate  toil  which  never  finds  complete  satisfaction.  This 
eternal  frustration  of  our  ideals  or  will  is  an  essential  part  of 
spiritual  life,  and  enriches  it  just  as  the  shadows  enrich  the 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  x. 


246  Later  Philosophy 

picture  or  certain  discords  bring  about  richer  harmony.  The 
Absolute  himself  suffers  our  daily  crucifixion,  but  his  triumph 
ant  spiritual  nature  asserts  itself  in  us  through  that  very  suffer 
ing.  This  profoundly  consoling  argument,  which  both  elevates 
us  and  sinks  our  individual  sorrows  in  a  great  cosmic  drama,  is, 
of  course,  an  expression  of  the  historical  Christian  wisdom  of 
the  beatitude  of  suffering.  But  it  offended  the  traditional 
individualism  which  finds  its  theologic  and  metaphysical  ex 
pression  in  the  doctrine  of  free  will.  If  each  individual  is  a 
part  of  the  divine  self,  how  can  we  censure  the  poor  wretch  who 
fails  to  live  up  to  the  proper  standard  ?*  It  is  significant  of  the 
unconventionality  of  Royce's  thought  that  he  never  attached 
great  importance  to  the  question  of  blame  or  the  free  and  inten 
tional  nature  of  sin.  The  evils  uppermost  in  his  mind  are  those 
resulting  from  ignorance,  from  the  clumsiness  of  inexperience 
rather  than  from  wilful  misdeeds;  and,  unlike  most  American 
philosophers,  he  rightly  saw  that  the  religious  conscience  of 
mankind  has  always  regarded  sin  as  something  which  happens 
to  us  even  against  our  will.  Against  the  complacent  belief  of 
the  comfortable  that  no  one  suffers  or  succeeds  except  through 
his  own  sins  or  virtues,  Royce  opposes  the  view  of  St.  Paul  that 
we  are  all  members  of  each  other's  bodies  and  that  "no  man 
amongst  us  is  wholly  free  from  the  consequences  or  from  the 
degradation  involved  in  the  crimes  of  his  less  enlightened  or 
less  devoted  neighbours,  that  the  solidarity  of  mankind  links 
the  crimes  of  each  to  the  sorrows  of  all. " 

For  the  elaboration  of  the  social  nature  of  our  intellectual 
as  well  as  of  our  moral  concepts,  Royce  was  largely  indebted 
to  suggestions  from  Peirce.  In  his  earliest  books  we  find  no 
direct  reference  to  Peirce.  We  can  only  conjecture  that  he 
owed  to  that  man  of  genius  the  emphasis  on  the  social  nature 
of  truth  and  the  formulation  of  the  ethical  imperative :  Live  in 
the  light  of  all  possible  consequences.  But  with  the  publica 
tion  of  the  two  volumes  of  The  World  and  the  Individual  (1901), 
Royce's  indebtedness  to  Peirce  becomes  explicit  and  steadily 
increases  thereafter. 

The  main  thesis  of  that  book,  the  reconciliation  of  the  exist 
ence  of  the  Absolute  Self  with  the  genuine  individuality  of  our 

1  See  Howison  in  The  Conception  of  God,  by  Royce,  Le  Conte,  Howison,  and 
Mezes. 


Josiah  Royce  247 

particular  selves,  is  effected  by  means  of  illustrations  from  the 
field  of  modern  mathematics,  especially  by  the  use  of  the 
modern  mathematical  concept  of  the  infinite  as  a  collection  of 
which  a  part  may  be  similar  to  the  whole.  Peirce  had  done  this 
before  him  in  a  remarkable  article  entitled  The  Law  of  Mind, 
in  the  second  volume  of  The  Monist.  In  generously  acknowledg 
ing  his  obligation  to  Peirce,  Royce  rightly  felt  his  fundamental 
idealistic  position  to  be  independent  of  that  of  Peirce;  but  it  is 
noticeable  that  all  Royce's  references  to  the  logic  of  mathe 
matics  are  in  full  agreement  with  Peirce' s  view  of  the  reality  of 
abstract  logical  and  mathematical  universals,  and  it  may  well 
be  questioned  whether  this  can  be  harmonized  with  the  nomi 
nalist  or  Berkeleian  elements  of  Royce's  idealism. 

His  subsequent  work  falls  into  two  distinct  groups,  the 
mathematical-logical  and  the  ethical-religious.  Of  the  former 
group,  his  essay  on  logic  in  The  Encyclopedia  of  the  Philosophi 
cal  Sciences  is  philosophically  the  most  important.  Logic  is 
there  presented  not  as  primarily  concerned  with  the  laws  of 
thought  or  even  with  methodology  but  after  the  manner  of 
Peirce  as  the  most  general  science  of  objective  order.  In  this 
as  in  other  of  his  mathematical-logical  papers  Royce  still  pro 
fesses  adherence  to  his  idealism,  but  this  adherence  in  no  way 
affects  any  of  the  arguments  which  proceed  on  a  perfectly 
realistic  basis.  In  his  religio- ethical  works  he  follows  Peirce 
even  more,  and  the  Mind  or  Spirit  of  the  Community  replaces 
the  Absolute.  In  his  last  important  book,  The  Problem  of 
Christianity  (1913),  all  the  concepts  of  Pauline  Christianity 
are  interpreted  in  terms  of  a  social  psychology,  the  personality 
of  Christ  being  entirely  left  out  except  as  an  embodiment  of 
the  spirit  of  the  beloved  community. 

The  World  and  the  Individual  is  still,  as  regards  sustained 
mastery  of  technical  metaphysics,  the  nearest  approach  to  a 
philosophic  classic  that  America  has  as  yet  produced.  Its  pub 
lication  was  the  high- water  mark  of  the  idealistic  tide.  Royce's 
previous  monism  had  aroused  the  opposition  of  pluralistic  ideal 
ists  like  Howison  and  Thomas  Davidson. x  But  with  the  begin- 

1  Howison  and  Davidson  both  owed  much  of  their  impulse  to  philosophy  to 
W.  T.  Harris.  Howison  proved  one  of  the  most  successful  and  inspiring  teachers 
of  philosophy  that  America  has  as  yet  produced.  Within  a  short  period  three 
of  his  pupils,  Bakewell,  McGilvary,  and  Lovejoy  were  elected  to  the  presidency 
of  the  American  Philosophical  Association.  Davidson  did  not  write  much  on 


248  Later  Philosophy 

ning  of  the  twentieth  century  idealism  itself  became  the  object 
of  organized  attack  by  two  movements  known  as  pragmatism 
and  naif-  or  neo-realism.  The  former  was  due  to  the  work  of 
James  and  Dewey;  the  latter  to  the  spread  of  renewed  and 
serious  interest  in  scientific  philosophy,  especially  in  the 
renaissance  of  mathematical  philosophy  best  represented  by 
Bertrand  Russell.  It  is,  however,  an  historic  fact  that  Royce 
contributed  very  largely  to  the  effective  spread  of  these  new 
philosophies,  to  pragmatism  by  his  ethical  (as  opposed  to 
intellectual)  idealism"  and  by  his  emphasis  on  the  practical  as 
pect  of  ideas,  and  to  neo-realism  by  his  teaching  and  writing 
on  mathematical  logic.  His  profound  and  loyal  devotion  to 
the  ethical  interests  of  mankind  did  not  prevent  him  from 
regarding  the  question  of  human  immortality  as  "one  for  rea 
son  in  precisely  the  same  sense  in  which  the  properties  of 
prime  numbers  and  the  kinetic  theory  of  gases  are  matters  for 
exact  investigation."  In  this  way  he  continued  to  represent, 
against  the  growing  tide  of  anti-intellectualism,  the  old  faith 
in  the  dignity  and  potency  of  reason  which  is  the  corner-stone 
of  humanistic  liberalism. 

In  William  James  (1842-1910)  we  meet  a  personality  of  such 
large  proportions  and  of  such  powerful  appeal  to  contemporane 
ous  sentiment  that  we  may  well  doubt  whether  the  time  has 
yet  come  when  his  work  can  be  adequately  estimated.  There 
are  many  who  claim  that  he  has  transformed  the  very  sub 
stance  of  philosophy  by  bringing  it  down  from  the  cold,  trans 
cendental  heights  to  men's  business  and  bosoms.  But  whether 
that  be  so  or  not,  the  width  and  depth  of  his  sympathies  and 
the  irresistible  magic  of  his  words  have  undoubtedly  trans 
formed  the  tone  and  manner  of  American  philosophic  writing. 
Outside  of  America  also  his  influence  has  been  impressive  and 
is  steadily  increasing. 

It  is  instructive  to  note  at  the  outset  the  judgment  of 
orthodox  philosophers,  boldly  expressed  by  Howison : 

Emerson  and  James  were  both  great  men  of  letters,  great  writers, 
yes,  great  thinkers,  if  you  will,  but  they  do  not  belong  in  the  strict 

technical  philosophy,  confining  himself  for  the  most  part  to  books  on  education. 
James  called  him  a  "  knight  errant  of  the  intellectual  life  "  (Memories  and  Studies). 
In  a  letter  to  the  writer,  Professor  Hoffding  calls  Davidson  "one  of  the  most 
beautiful  figures  in  modem  philosophy. " 


William  James  249 

list  of  philosophers.  Mastery  in  logic  is  the  cardinal  test  of  the  true 
philosopher,  and  neither  Emerson  nor  James  possessed  it.  Both, 
on  the  contrary,  did  their  best  to  discredit  it.1 

As  a  criticism  this  is  hardly  fair.  James  certainly  elaborated 
definite  doctrines  as  to  the  nature  of  mind,  truth,  and  reality. 
In  his  Radical  Empiricism  and  in  The  Meaning  of 'Truth  he  even 
showed  considerable  dialectic  skill.  Moreover,  it  may  well  be 
maintained  that  he  did  not  seek  to  discredit  logic  in  general, 
but  only  the  logic  of  "vicious  intellectualism. "  Nevertheless, 
Howison's  opinion  is  significant  in  calling  attention  to  the  dis 
tinction  between  philosophy  as  technique  and  philosophy  as 
vision.  From  the  professional  point  of  view  it  is  not  sufficient 
that  a  man  should  believe  in  free  will,  absolute  chance,  or  the 
survival  of  consciousness  beyond  death.  To  be  worthy  of  being 
called  a  philosopher,  one  must  have  a  logically  reasoned  basis 
for  his  belief.  James  was  aware  of  the  importance  of  technique, 
and  was,  in  fact,  extraordinarily  well  informed  as  to  the  sub 
stance  and  main  tendencies  of  all  the  diverse  technical  schools. 
But  he  was  wholly  interested  in  philosophy  as  a  religious  vision 
of  life,  and  he  had  the  cultivated  gentleman's  aversion  for 
pedantry.  His  thoughts  ran  in  vivid  pictures,  and  he  could  not 
trust  logical  demonstration  as  much  as  his  intuitive  suggestions. 
IJence  his  philosophic  writings  are  extremely  rich  in  the  variety 
of  concrete  factual  insight,  but  not  in  effective  answers  to  the 
searching  criticisms  of  men  like  Royce,  Russell,  and  Bradley. 
James  was  aware  of  this  and  asked  that  his  philosophy  be  judged 
generously  in  its  large  outlines;  the  elaboration  of  details  might 
well  be  left  to  the  future. 

' '  The  originality  of  William  James, ' '  says  one  of  his  European 
admirers,  "does  not  appear  so  much  in  his  cardinal  beliefs, 
which  he  took  from  the  general  current  of  Christian  thought,  as 
in  the  novel  and  audacious  method  by  which  he  defended  them 
against  the  learned  philosophies  of  his  day.  "2  This,  also,  is  not 
true  without  qualification.  James  took  almost  nothing  from 
current  Christian  philosophy.  Nor  do  any  of  the  great  historic 
Christian  doctrines  of  sin  and  atonement  or  salvation  find  any 
echo  in  his  thought.  Orthodox  Christianity  would  condemn 
James  as  a  confessed  pantheist  who  denied  the  omnipotence  of 

1  Philosophical  Review,  vol.  xxv,  p.  241,  May,  1916.. 
a  Flournoy,  William  James,  p.  16. 


250  Later  Philosophy 

God.  But  though  James  is  far  from  Christian  theology,  he 
gives  vivid  utterance  to  the  ordinary  popular  Christianity  which 
believes,  not  in  a  God  who  expresses  himself  in  universal  laws, 
but  in  a  God  to  whom  we  can  pray  for  help  against  our  enemies, 
whom  we  can  please  and  even  help  by  our  faith  in  Him.  This 
is  due  to  James's  deep  sympathy  with  common  experience 
rather  than  with  the  problems  of  the  reflective-minded.  But 
the  modern  sophisticated  intellect  is  certainly  tickled  by  the 
sight  of  a  most  learned  savant  espousing  the  cause  of  popular 
as  opposed  to  learned  theology,  and  by  the  open  confession  of 
belief  in  piecemeal  supernaturalism  on  the  basis  of  spiritistic 
phenomena.  James's  antipathy  to  the  Hegelian  and  Roycean 
attempts  to  prove  the  existence  of  the  Absolute  certainly  plays 
a  more  prominent  part  in  his  writings  than  does  his  antipathy 
to  popular  unbelief.  But  the  method  of  the  absolutist  he  re 
jected,  not  only  because  of  its  insufferable  pretension  to  finality 
of  proof,  but  mainly  because  it  is  in  the  way  of  one  who  prefers 
an  anthropomorphic  universe  that  is  tingling  with  life  through 
and  through  and  is  constantly  meeting  with  new  adventures. 

The  union  of  religious  mysticism  with  biologic  and  psycho 
logic  empiricism  is  characteristic  of  James's  work  from  the  very 
beginning.  He  grew  up  in  a  household  characterized  by  liberal 
culture  and  mystic  Swedenborgian  piety.1  The  teacher  who 
made  the  greatest  impression  upon  him,  Louis  Agassiz,  was  a 
pious  opponent  of  Darwin  but  a  rare  master  in  the  art  of  ob 
serving  significant  details.  More  than  one  American  naturalist 
caught  the  fire  of  his  enthusiasm  for  fact.  The  corhpanion- 
ship  of  Chauncey  Wright  and  the  writings  of  Renouvier  weaned 
James  from  his  father's  religio-philosophical  monism.  The 
empirical  way  of  thought  of  Hume  and  Mill  proved  most  con 
genial  to  one  who  was  par  excellence  a  naturalist  and  delighted 
in  the  observation  of  significant  detail.2 

James  began  his  career  as  a  teacher  of  physiology  and  gradu 
ally  drifted  into  psychology.  His  Principles  of  Psychology  (2 
vols.,  1890)  contains  the  substance  of  his  philosophy.  Having, 

1  His  father,  Henry  James,  ST.,  was  a  Swedenborgian  philosopher  and  a  cul 
tivated  gentleman  of  ample  means,  who  united  to  genuine  originality  of  thought  a 
remarkable  insight  into  human  character  and  a  delightful  freshness  and  pungency 
of  language. 

2  James  studied  art  and  was  a  proficient  draftsman  before  he  finally  decided 
to  study  medicine. 


William  James  25i 

despite  the  influence  of  Agassiz,  become  converted  to  Darwin 
ism,  he  was  led  to  adopt  as  fundamental  the  view  of  Spencer 
that  thought  is  something  developed  in  the  course  of  evolution 
and  must,  therefore,  have  a  biologic  function.  The  great  idealis 
tic  argument  against  the  old  associationist  psychology  of  Hume, 
Mill,  Bain,  and  Spencer  was  to  the  effect  that  the  sensational 
elements  can  at  most  account  for  the  qualities  of  things,  but 
not  for  their  relations  or  connections;  and  when  it  was  once 
granted  that  the  relations  between  things  were  of  a  non-sensa 
tional  or  non-empirical  character,  very  little  of  the  world  was 
left  to  the  empiricist.  James  early  became  convinced  of  the 
force  of  this  argument  and,  following  certain  suggestions  of 
Peirce  and  possibly  Hodgson,  tried  to  save  empiricism  by  mak 
ing  it  more  radical,  by  giving  the  connecting  relations  themselves 
a  psychologic  status  on  a  par  with  the  things  they  connect. 
Thus  he  thought  to  restore  the  fluidity  and  connectedness 
of  our  world  without  admitting  the  necessity  for  the  idealist's 
transcendental  glue  to  keep  together  the  discrete  elements  of 
experience.  Radical  empiricism  thus  becomes  a  metaphysic 
which  holds  the  whole  world  to  be  composed  of  a  single  stuff 
called  pure  experience.  This  sounds  monistic  enough,  and 
James's  adherence  to  the  view  of  Bergson  re-enforces  this  im 
pression  Nevertheless,  James  insisted  that  the  world  as  ex 
perienced  does  not  possess  the  degree  of  unity  claimed  for  it  by 
Royce  and  other  monists,  but  that  things  are  essentially  many 
and  their  connections  often  external  and  accidental.  At  times 
James  professes  the  dualistic  realism  of  commonsense.  "I 
start  with  two  things,  the  objective  facts  and  the  claims. "  But 
ideas  and  things  are  both  experiences  taken  in  different  con 
texts,  so  that  his  position  has  not  inaptly  been  called  neutral 
monism,  and  thus  assimilated  to  the  philosophy  of  Ernst 
Mach. 

It  has  been  claimed  that  this  view  eliminates  most  of  the 
traditional  problems  of  metaphysics,  such  as  that  of  the  rela 
tion  of  mind  and  body,  and  also  eliminates  the  need  for  the 
Spencerian  unknowable  and  Royce's  or  Bradley's  absolute. 
But  just  exactly  what  experience  is,  James  does  not  tell  us, 
except  that  it  is  something  to  be  lived  rather  than  to  be  defined. 

The  exigencies  of  controversy  as  well  as  James's  generous 
desire  to  give  all  possible  credit  to  Peirce,  have  led  the  public  to 


Later   Philosophy 

regard  pragmatism  and  James's  philosophy  as  identical  terms. 
To  James,  however,  pragmatism  was  but  the  method  of  philo 
sophic  discussion,  the  vestibule  to  his  radical  empiricism.  The 
controversy,  however,  which  arose  about  pragmatism  enabled 
James  to  elaborate  from  different  approaches  his  account  of  the 
nature  of  truth.  The  meaning  of  ideas  is  to  be  found  in  their 
particular  experimental  consequences.  Abstract  ideas  are  not 
copies  of  things  but  their  substitutes  or  derivatives,  evolved  in 
the  process  of  evolution  to  enable  us  to  deal  more  adequately 
with  the  stream  of  immediate  experience.  An  idea  is,  therefore, 
true  if  it  enables  us  to  deal  satisfactorily  with  the  concrete 
experiences  at  which  it  aims.  An  idea  is  said  to  work  satis 
factorily  if  it  leads  us  to  expected  facts,  if  it  harmonizes  with 
other  accepted  ideas,  if  it  releases  our  energies  or  satisfies  emo 
tional  craving  for  elegance,  peace,  economy,  or  any  kind  of 
utility. 

So  anxious  was  James  to  overthrow  the  view  that  the  truth 
of  an  idea  consists  in  its  being  an  inert  copy  of  reality,  so  anx 
ious  to  substitute  for  it  the  more  activist  view  that  an  idea  is 
true  if  it  works  or  leads  to  certain  results,  that  he  neglected  to 
indicate  the  relative  importance  of  these  results.  This  led  to  a 
great  deal  of  misunderstanding  and  caused  considerable  scandal. 
Those  brought  up  in  the  scientific  tradition  and  trained  to  view 
the  emotionally  satisfactory  consequences  of  ideas  as  having 
nothing  to  do  with  their  scientific  or  theoretic  value  were  scan 
dalized  by  James's  doctrine  of  the  will  or  right  to  believe  any 
thing  the  acceptance  of  which  made  us  more  comfortable.  This 
was  in  part  a  tragic  misunderstanding.  Most  of  James's  life 
was  a  fight  against  accepting  the  monistic  philosophy  simply 
because  of  its  aesthetic  nobility.  He  rejected  it  precisely  because 
it  was  "too  buttoned  up  and  white  checkered,  too  clean-shaven 
a  thing  to  speak  for  the  vast  slow-breeding,  unconscious  cosmos 
with  its  dread  abysses  and  its  unknown  tides. "  It  is  true,  how 
ever,  that  absorption  in  the  psychologic  factor,  personal  or 
aesthetic,  which  actually  does  make  some  people  prefer  a 
narrowly  classic  universe  and  others  a  generously  romantic 
one,  made  him  obscure  the  distinction  between  the  causes  of 
belief  and  the  evidence  for  the  truth  which  we  believe.  We 
may  all  start  with  a  biassed  or  emotional  preface,  but  that  is 
neither  evidence  nor  guaranty  of  our  arriving  at  scientific  truth. 


William  James  253 

Like  other  violent  opponents  of  intellectualism,  James  himself 
falls  into  the  intellectualistic  assumption  that  we  must  either 
wholly  believe  or  wholly  disbelieve,  just  as  one  must  either  go 
to  church  or  stay  out.  He  ignores  the  scientific  attitude  of 
suspended  judgment  and  the  fact  that  men  may  be  compelled 
to  act  without  being  constrained  in  judgment.  We  may  vote  for 
X  or  Y  and  yet  know  that  owing  to  the  absence  of  adequate  in 
formation  our  choice  has  been  little  more  than  a  blind  guess.  His 
interest  in  vital  preferences  and  his  impatience  with  the  emotion 
ally  thin  air  of  purely  logical  argumentation  led  James,  towards 
the  end  of  his  life,  to  the  acceptance  of  the  extreme  anti- 
logical  view  of  Bergson  that  our  logical  and  mathematical 
ideas  are  inherently  incapable  of  revealing  the  real  and  chang 
ing  world. 

James's  interest  in  philosophy  was  fundamentally  restricted 
to  the  psychological  aspect  of  things.  He  therefore  never 
elaborated  any  systematic  theory  of  morals,  politics,  or  social 
organization.  His  temperamental  preference  for  the  novel,  the 
unique,  and  the  colourful  re-enforced  his  traditional  American 
liberalism  and  made  him  an  extreme  individualist.  He  at 
tached  scant  value  to  the  organized  or  fixed  channels  through 
which  the  fitful  tides  of  ordinary  human  emotion  find  perma 
nent  expression.  This  shows  itself  best  in  his  Varieties  of  Re 
ligious  Experience  (1902).  He  is  interested  only  in  the  extreme 
variations  of  religious  experiences,  in  the  geniuses  or  aristocrats 
of  the  religious  life.  The  religious  experience  of  the  great  mass, 
or  even  of  intellectual  men  like  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  who  go 
to  church  without  troubling  much  about  matters  of  belief,  seems 
to  James  "second-hand"  and  does  not  solicit  his  attention. 
Neither  does  the  whole  question  of  ritual  or  ceremony.  He  is 
interested  in  the  beliefs  of  extraordinary  and  picturesque  in 
dividuals.  Hence  his  book  on  religion  tells  us  almost  nothing  to 
explain  the  spread  and  the  vitality  of  the  great  historic  religions, 
Buddhism,  Confucianism,  Judaism,  Islam,  and  Christianity. 
This  extreme  individualism,  however,  is  connected  with  an 
extraordinary  democratic  openness  and  readiness  to  admit  that 
it  is  only  the  blindness  in  human  nature  that  prevents  us  from 
seeing  the  uniqueness  of  every  individual.  Unlike  any  other 
philosopher,  William  James  was  entirely  devoid  of  the  pride 
of  the  intellect.  He  was  as  willing  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth  to 


254  Later  Philosophy 

associate  with  the  intellectual  publicans  and  sinners  and  learn 
from  the  denizens  of  the  intellectual  underworld. 

James's  position  in  the  history  of  metaphysics  is  still  a 
matter  of  debate,  but  as  a  seer  or  prophet  he  may  fitly  be  put 
beside  Emerson.  Like  Emerson,  he  preached  and  nobly  exem 
plified  faith  in  one's  intuition  and  the  duty  of  keeping  one's 
oracular  soul  open.  In  spite  of  a  note  of  obscurantism  in  his  atti 
tude  to  logic  and  "over  beliefs,"  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  main 
effect  of  his  work  was  to  raise  the  American  standard  of 
intellectual  honesty  and  courage:  Let  us  stop  this  miserable 
pretence  of  having  at  last  logically  proved  the  comforting  cer 
tainties  of  our  inherited  religion.  Let  us  admit  that  we  have 
no  absolute  assurance  of  the  complete  success  of  our  ideals. 
But  the  fight  is  on.  We  can  all  take  our  part.  Shame  on  the 
one  who  sulks  and  stays  out. 

The  vital  and  arresting  words  in  which  James  was  able  to 
put  his  thoughts  were  bound  to  attract  large  public  attention. 
But  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  would  have  got  a  full  hearing 
from  American  philosophers  if  it  were  not  for  the  powerful 
support  of  John  Dewey,  the  only  American  about  whom  has 
been  formed  a  regular  philosophic  school.  Dewey  began  his 
philosophic  career  under  the  influence  of  Harris,  T.  H.  Green, 
and  Bosanquet,  and  in  his  early  writings,  e.g.,  his  Psychology,  he 
showed  himself  a  master  of  Hegelian  dialectics.  Reflection, 
however,  led  him  to  find  an  incurable  incompatibility  between 
the  supernaturalism  latent  in  idealism  and  the  naturalistic 
account  of  the  origin  of  human  thought.  He  completely  accepts 
James's  view  of  the  biologic  function  of  thought,  and  brings 
to  its  service  such  a  thorough  mastery  of  philosophic  technique 
as  to  compel  attention  from  philosophers  who,  like  other  pro 
fessionals,  find  it  hard  to  admit  the  existence  of  good  music 
where  there  is  no  obvious  virtuosity.  Despite  his  large  debt  to 
James's  Principles  of  Psychology,  Dewey  is  an  independent  ally 
rather  than  a  disciple,  and  James  was  largely  indebted  in  his 
later  writings  to  Dewey's  doctrine  of  the  instrumental  charac 
ter  of  our  ideas.  It  appears  that  pragmatism,  like  other  success 
ful  human  movements,  can  appeal  to  men  of  most  diverse 
temperaments.  While  James  is  keenly  alive  to  the  claims  of 
the  traditional  supernaturalism  and  uses  pragmatism  as  a  way 
of  justifying  it,  Dewey  uses  pragmatism  as  a  means  of  eliminat- 


John  Dewey  255 

ing  all  theologic  problems.  Philosophic  concepts,  like  God, 
Freedom,  and  Immortality,  he  tells  us  bluntly,  have  outlived 
their  usefulness  as  sanctions,  and  the  business  of  philosophy 
henceforth  is  to  be  with  those  ideas  which  will  help  us  to  trans 
form  the  empirical  world.1  Despite  the  complexity  of  his 
sentences,  which  an  austere  regard  for  accuracy  causes  to  be 
overloaded  with  qualifications,  Dewey  is  essentially  one  of 
those  philosophers  who,  like  Spinoza,  impress  the  world  with 
their  profound  simplicity.  He  is  entirely  free  from  that  human 
complexity  which  makes  James  banish  the  soul  and  even  con 
sciousness  as  psychologic  entities  and  yet  favour  the  sub 
conscious  mind,  Fechner's  earth  spirits,  and  the  like.  Dewey 
is  a  thoroughgoing  and  consistent  naturalist.  He  not  only 
accepts  the  Darwinian  account  of  the  origin  of  the  human 
faculty,  but  he  also  relies  on  the  method  of  the  Darwinian 
descriptive  naturalist  to  build  up  the  body  of  philosophic  ideas. 
He  makes  no  attempt  to  build  up  or  deduce  any  part  of  the 
world  on  the  basis  of  his  fundamental  assumption,  but  ideas 
are  sought  in  their  natural  state  and  described  just  where,  when, 
and  how  they  function.  This  preference  for  naturalistic  de 
scription  rather  than  for  systematic  deduction  as  a  philosophic 
method  is  not  merely  a  matter  of  temperament ;  it  also  indicates 
the  extent  to  which  Darwin's  work  has  so  affected  men's  imagi 
nation  as  to  cause  natural  history  to  replace  mathematics  and 
physics  as  the  model  of  scientific  method. 

In  the  history  of  philosophy  naturalism  has  been  associated 
with  the  study  of  physics  (generally  atomic) ,  with  emphasis  on 
the  way  our  thoughts  are  controlled  by  our  bodies  or  by  the 
physical  environment.  Dewey  has  no  physical  theories.  He  is 
a  psychologist,  primarily  interested  in  how  and  why  men  think 
and  how  their  thoughts  modify  their  experience.  He  is  a  pro 
fessed  realist  in  his  belief  that  our  thoughts  alone  do  not  con 
stitute  the  nature  of  things  but  that  there  is  a  pre-existing 
world  of  which  thought  is  an  outgrowth  and  on  which  it  reacts. 
But  the  continual  emphasis  on  thought  as  efficient  in  trans 
forming  our  world  gives  him  the  appearance  of  having  remained 

1  Dewey 's  disciples  like  Moore  and  Bode  are  outspoken  in  their  contempt  for 
the  view  that  philosophy  may  be  a  consolation  for  the  irremediable  evil  growing 
out  of  our  human  limitations.  Philosophy  is  to  help  us  in  our  daily  job  and  has 
nothing  to  do  with  vacations  or  holidays. 


256  Later  Philosophy 

an  idealist  in  spite  of  his  conversion.  Like  the  Hegelian  ideal 
ists,  he  distrusts  abstractions  and  prefers  the  "organic"  point 
of  view  to  that  which  views  things  as  composed  of  distinct 
elements.  He  differs  from  the  Hegelians  in  this  respect  only  in 
his  contention  that  everything  acquires  its  meaning  by  refer 
ence  to  a  changing  "situation"  instead  of  by  reference  to  an 
all  inclusive  totality.  Like  the  ethical  idealists,  also,  Dewey 
insists  with  Puritanic  austerity  on  the  serious  responsibility  of 
philosophy.  It  must  not  be  a  merely  aesthetic  contemplation  of 
the  world,  nor  a  satisfaction  of  idle  curiosity  or  wonder.  It 
must  be  a  means  for  reforming  or  improving.  Just  what  con 
stitutes  an  improvement  of  man's  estate  we  are  not  clearly  told. 
In  his  theory  of  education  which  forms  the  chief  impetus  and 
application  of  his  theoretic  views  the  plasticity  of  human  nature 
is  fully  recognized;  and  he  argues  that  intelligence  not  only 
makes  us  more  efficient  in  attaining  given  ends,  but  liberalizes 
our  ends.  In  the  main,  however,  he  emphasizes  improved  con 
trol  over  external  nature  rather  than  improved  control  over  our 
own  passions  and  desires. 

Judged  by  the  ever-increasing  number  and  contagious  zeal 
of  his  disciples,  Dewey  has  proved  to  be  the  most  influential 
philosopher  that  America  has  as  yet  produced.  This  is  all  the 
more  remarkable  when  we  remember  that  all  his  writings  are 
fragmentary,  highly  technical,  and  without  any  extraneous 
graces  of  style  to  relieve  the  close-knitting  of  the  arguments. 
Clearly  this  triumph  is  due  not  only  to  rare  personal  qualities 
as  a  teacher  but  also  to  the  extent  that  his  thought  corresponds 
to  the  prevailing  American  temper  of  the  time.  Dewey  appeals 
powerfully  to  the  prevailing  distrust  of  other- worldliness,  a 
distrust  which  permeates  even  our  theology  with  its  emphasis 
on  the  social  mission  of  the  Church.  The  doctrine  that  all 
ideas  are  and  ought  to  be  instruments  for  reforming  the  world 
and  making  it  a  better  place  to  live  in,  appeals  at  once  to  popu 
lar  utilitarianism,  to  the  worship  of  immediate  practical  results 
of  which  Theodore  Roosevelt  was  such  a  conspicuous  repre 
sentative.  In  a  country  where  so  many  great  deeds  in  the 
conquest  of  nature  are  still  to  be  performed,  the  practical  man's 
contempt  for  the  contemplative  and  the  visionary  is  re-enforced 
by  the  Puritanic  horror  of  idle  play  and  of  things  which  are 
purely  ornamental.  A  philosophy  which  views  nature  as 


J.  Mark  Baldwin  257 

material  to  be  transformed  by  our  intelligence  appeals  to  the  pre 
vailing  light-hearted  optimism  which  sees  success  as  the  con 
stant  reward  of  intelligent  effort  and  finds  no  inherent  obstacles 
to  the  establishment  of  a  heaven  on  earth.  Certainly  Dewey 
nowhere  calls  to  our  attention  the  existence  of  incurable  evil — 
the  evil  against  which  our  only  remedy  is  some  form  of  wisely 
cultivated  resignation. 

In  his  zeal  for  making  philosophy  useful  and  responsible,  a 
good  deal  of  the  traditional  glory  of  philosophy  is  ignored,  if 
not  denied.  The  intellectual  activity  which  we  call  theoretic 
science  is  subordinated  to  its  practical  application. J  In  elimin 
ating  the  personal  consolations  of  philosophy,  he  also  eliminates 
the  great  saving  experience  which  it  affords  us  in  making  us 
spectators  of  a  great  cosmic  drama  in  which  solar  systems  are 
born  and  destroyed,  a  drama  in  which  our  part  as  actors  is  of 
infinitesimal  significance.  Yet  historically  the  most  significant 
feature  of  Dewey's  thought  is  undoubtedly  the  fact  that  in  an 
age  of  waning  faith  in  human  reason — witness  the  rapid  spread 
of  the  romantic  mysticism  of  Bergson — he  has  rallied  those  who 
still  believe  in  the  cause  of  liberalism  based  on  faith  in  the  value 
of  intellectual  enlightenment. 

Similar  to  the  view  of  James  and  Dewey  in  accepting  the 
evolutionary  philosophy  as  basic,  and  keeping  even  closer  to 
Darwinian  ideas,  is  the  philosophy  of  J.  Mark  Baldwin.  Bald 
win  began  as  a  psychologist  of  the  orthodox  type ;  but  availing 
himself  of  the  views  on  social  consciousness  propounded  by 
Royce  in  the  early  nineties,  he  produced  a  system  of  evolu 
tionary  social  psychology  with  a  very  elaborate  technical  ter 
minology  and  analytic  scaffolding.  This  emphasis  on  technical 
apparatus  makes  his  great  three- volumed  treatise  on  Thoughts 
and  Things  (1906-11)  one  of  the  most  obscure  books  written  in 
America,  but  for  all  that  it  seems  to  have  met  with  appreciation 
in  France  and  Germany,  where  it  has  been  translated.  An  in 
telligible  summary  of  his  later  views  is  to  be  found  in  his  Genetic 
Theory  of  Reality  (191 5) ,  in  which  he  develops  this  theory  of  pan- 

1  Dewey  insists  with  some  justice  that  by  practical  he  does  not  necessarily 
mean  ends  of  the  bread-and-butter  type.  But  his  illustrations  of  the  process  of 
knowledge  are  overwhelmingly  of  the  type  generally  called  useful  and  very  sel 
dom  drawn  from  the  experience  of  the  mathematician  or  the  philosopher  himself, 
even  if  he  is  a  pragmatist.  He  glorifies  zeal  for  developing  the  applications  of 
propositions  rather  than  their  implications. 
VOL.  in — 17 


258  Later  Philosophy 

calism,  viz.,  that  the  aesthetic  consciousness  is  primary.  In  this 
respect,  as  well  as  in  his  emphasis  on  the  importance  of  the 
play  impulse,  Baldwin  is  unique  among  American  philosophers. 
The  philosophic  temper  of  an  age  can  be  judged  by  the  kind 
of  merit  it  neglects  as  well  as  by  what  it  worships.  For  this 
reason  as  well  as  for  the  unique  value  of  his  work,  no  account 
of  American  philosophy  should  omit  a  consideration  of  George 
Santayana. J  If  a  European  critic  like  Taine  were  to  ask  for  an 
American  book  on  philosophy  containing  a  distinct  and  com 
prehensive  view  of  human  life,  its  aims  and  diverse  manifesta 
tions,  we  could  not  mention  anything  more  appropriate  than 
Santayana's  Life  of  Reason  (5  vols.,  1905-06).  Most  American 
philosophic  works  are  either  monographs  on  special  topics  or  else 
more  or  less  elaborate  controversial  pamphlets  on  behalf  of  one 
view  or  other. 2  Santayana  more  than  any  other  American  since 
Emerson  has  cultivated  the  ancient  virtue  of  calm  detachment 
which  distinguishes  the  philosopher  from  the  partisan  journalist 
or  the  zealous  missionary.  His  zeal,  if  any,  is  that  of  the  artist 
freely  picturing  the  whole  of  human  experience  as  surveyed 
retrospectively  by  one  interested  in  the  life  of  reason.  "The 
unsolved  problems  of  life  and  nature  and  the  Babel  of  society 
need  not  disturb  the  genial  observer."  Dewey's  anathemas 
against  the  purely  contemplative  philosopher,  the  "otiose 
observer,"  do  not  disturb  one  who  holds  that  man's  natural 
dignity  and  joy — as  manifested  in  art,  pure  science,  and  philo 
sophy — consists  "in  representing  many  things  without  being 
them ;  and  in  letting  imagination,  through  sympathy,  celebrate 
and  echo  their  life."  Man's  proper  happiness  is  constituted 
by  the  interest  and  beauty  of  the  mind's  "inward  landscape 
rather  than  by  any  fortunes  that  await  his  body  in  the  outer 
world.  "3  Philosophy  is  not  merely  a  means  for  improving  the 
conditions  of  common  life,  but  is  itself  "a  more  intense  sort  of 
experience  than  common  life  is,  just  as  pure  and  subtle  music 
heard  in  retirement  is  something  keener  and  more  intense  than 
the  howling  of  storms  or  the  rumble  of  cities."4 

1  Another  excuse  for  departing  from  the  prudent  policy  of  avoiding  in  history 
any  treatment  of  those  still  alive  and  active,  is  that  at  this  date  (1919)  it  does  not 
seem  that  Santayana's  future  career  will  belong  to  America. 

2  The  conditions  of  academic  life,  in  which  nearly  all  of  our  philosophers  are 
placed,  are  certainly  not  favourable  for  sustained,  deliberate,  and  thorough  com 
position.  3  Winds  of  Doctrine,  p.  215.         «  Three  Philosophic  Poets,  p.  124. 


George  Santayana  259 

That  which  distinguishes  Santayana  from  all  other  modern 
philosophers  is  the  way  he  combines  thoroughgoing  naturalism 
with  profound  appreciation  of  the  wisdom  commonly  called 
idealism  or  other- worldliness.  Completely  free  from  all  trace 
of  supernaturalism  in  metaphysics,  he  is  thoroughly  Greek  or 
humanistic  in  his  valuation  of  those  reasonable  restraints  which 
give  order,  dignity,  and  beauty  to  human  life.  Like  Dewey, 
perhaps  more  than  Dewey,  Santayana  is  a  thoroughgoing 
naturalist,  believing  that  mind  is  the  natural  effect  of  bodily 
growth  and  organization.  But  unlike  any  other  philosopher 
since  Aristotle,  Santayana  holds  fast  to  a  sharp  and  clear  dis 
tinction  between  the  origin  and  the  validity  of  our  ideals. 
Though  our  ideals  are  of  bodily  origin  they  need  not  serve 
bodily  needs,  and  above  all  they  need  no  actual  or  sensible 
embodiment  to  justify  their  claims.  There  is  no  necessity  for 
accepting  the  modern  evolutionist's  identification  of  the  best 
with  the  latest.  "Modern  Greece  is  not  exactly  the  crown  of 
ancient  Hellas."  Other  confusions  between  morality  and 
physics,  such  as  the  Hegelian  identification  of  the  ideal  and  the 
real,  of  the  desirable  and  the  existent,  are  vehemently  rejected 
as  servile  worship  of  brute  power  and  treacherous  to  our  ideal 
aspirations.  Thus  while  naturalism  is  the  only  intelligible 
philosophy,  the  attempt  of  naturalists  to  look  for  all  motives 
and  sanctions  in  the  material  world  always  generates  a  pro 
found  melancholy  from  which  mankind  instinctively  shrinks. 
The  sensuous  optimism  called  Greek  or  the  industrial  optimism 
called  American  are  but  "thin  disguises  for  despair,"  against 
which  the  mind  will  always  rebel  and  revert,  in  some  form  or 
other,  to  a  cultus  of  the  unseen.  The  explanation  of  this  para 
doxical  fact  Santayana  finds  in  a  Greek  distinction  between  the 
form  and  the  brute  existence  of  things.  The  form  and  qualities 
of  things  are  congenial  to  the  mind's  free  activity,  but  "when  an 
empirical  philosophy  calls  us  back  from  the  irresponsible  flights 
of  the  imagination  to  the  shock  of  sense  and  tries  to  remind  us 
that  in  this  alone  we  touch  existence, — we  feel  dispossessed  of 
our  nature  and  cramped  in  our  life. " x  The  true  life  of  reason, 
however,  is  not  to  be  found  in  wilful  idealistic  dreams,  but  in 
the  logical  activity  which  is  docile  to  fact  and  illumines  the 
actual  world  in  which  our  bodies  move. 

1  Reason  in  Common  Sense,  p.  191. 


260  Later  Philosophy 

As  a  child  of  Latin  and  Catholic  civilization,  Santayana  is 
profoundly  devoted  to  those  classic  forms  which  enshrine  the 
wisdom  and  happiness  of  the  past.  He  abhors  German  philoso 
phy  for  what  he  calls  its  romantic  wilfulness,  that  protestant  or 
rebellious  spirit  which  regards  the  mere  removal  of  restraints  as 
a  good.  ' '  The  life  of  reason  is  a  heritage  and  exists  only  through 
tradition."1  Traditional  forms  may,  indeed,  cramp  our  life, 
and  a  vital  mind  like  Shelley  will  revolt,  but  the  end  or  good  is 
not  freedom  but  some  more  congenial  form.  Santayana  holds 
in  contempt  the  prevailing  philosophy  which  glorifies  striving 
and  progress  but  in  which  there  are  no  ends  to  be  achieved 
and  no  ideal  by  which  progress  is  to  be  measured. 

The  burden  of  his  philosophy  is  the  analysis  of  common 
sense,  social  institutions,  religion,  art,  and  science  to  show  how 
reflection  can  distinguish  the  ideal  from  the  physical  embodi 
ment  in  which  traditional  wisdom  is  delivered  from  generation 
to  generation. 

In  his  social  philosophy  he  is  essentially  an  aristocrat,  valu 
ing  highly  those  historic  institutions,  cultivated  forms,  and 
reasonable  restraints  which  impose  order  on  our  natural  im 
pulses.  But  he  recognizes  the  shallowness  of  purely  personal 
culture  and  admits  that  our  emancipated,  atheistic,  inter 
national  democracy  is  not  only  replacing  the  old  order,  but 
that  "like  every  vital  impulse  [it]  is  pregnant  with  a  morality 
of  its  own."  Religion  to  Santayana  is  essentially  a  mode  or 
emancipating  man  from  worldliness  and  from  merely  personal 
limitations.  But  the  wisdom  which  its  dogmas,  ritual  forms, 
and  prayers  embody  is  not  truth  about  existence  but  about  those 
ideals  which  give  us  internal  strength  and  peace.  To  regard 
God  as  an  existence  rather  than  an  ideal  leads  to  superstition. 
Religious  superstitions,  he  admits,  often  debauch  morality  and 
impede  science,  but  the  errors  of  religion  should  be  viewed  with 
indulgent  sympathy.  Thus  Catholic  dogma  is  viewed  as  in 
volving  a  reasonable  deference  to  authority  but  leaving  the 
mind  essentially  free.  In  his  theory  of  art  Santayana  follows 
his  master  Aristotle  closely  in  spirit  though  not  in  words.  Art 
looks  at  life  from  above,  and  portraying  our  passions  in  their 
beauty  makes  them  interesting  and  delightful,  at  the  same  time 
softening  their  vital  compulsion.  "Art  is  abstract  and  incon- 

1  Winds  of  Doctrine,  p.  156. 


George  Santayana  261 

sequential  .  .  .  nothing  concerns  it  less  than  to  influence  the 
world" ;  but  in  revealing  beauty  it  gives  us  the  best  hint  of  the 
ultimate  good  which  life  offers.  Without  this  sight  of  beauty 
the  soul  would  not  continue  its  mortal  toil.  Perhaps  the  most 
characteristic  of  Santayana's  views  is  his  estimate  of  the  value 
of  modern  science  for  the  life  of  reason  or  civilization.  He 
accords  full  recognition  to  mechanical  science  not  merely  as  a 
source  of  useful  insight  but  as  a  liberation  of  the  human  soul. 
But  though  the  various  parts  of  science  are  mutually  illumi 
nating,  scientific  achievement  is  fragmentary  and  a  mechani 
cal  science  like  physiologic  psychology  may  not  give  a  man  as 
much  insight  as  does  some  poetic  suggestion.  Science  grows 
out  of  common  experience,  but  its  power  is  new,  comparatively 
feeble,  and  easily  blighted.  "The  experience  of  the  vanity  of 
the  world,  of  sin,  of  salvation,  of  miracle,  of  strange  revelations, 
and  of  mystic  loves,  is  a  far  deeper,  more  primitive,  and  there 
fore  probably  more  lasting  human  possession  than  is  that  of 
clear  historical  or  scientific  ideas.  "z 

Why,  in  spite  of  the  incomparable  distinction  and  moder 
nity  of  his  work,  has  Santayana  received  so  little  recognition  ? 
In  part  this  is  doubtless  due  to  the  unfortunate  manner  in 
which  his  principal  book,  The  Life  of  Reason,  is  written — a 
manner  which  does  not  attract  the  public  and  repels  the  pro 
fessional  philosopher. 2  Despite  unusual  felicity  of  diction  and 
a  cadence  which  often  reminds  us  of  Walter  Pater,  his  books  are 
difficult  reading.  It  is  difficult  to  find  the  thought  because  of 
his  preference  for  pithy  and  oracular  epigrams  rather  than  fully 
and  clearly  developed  arguments.  His  abstract  and  distant 
view  of  the  world  unrolls  itself  without  any  vivid  or  passionate 
incidents  to  grip  our  attention.  In  the  main,  however,  San 
tayana  has  failed  to  draw  fire  because  few  people  are  interested 
in  a  frankly  speculative  and  detached  philosophy  that  departs 
radically  from  the  accepted  traditions  and  makes  no  appeal  to 
the  partisan  zeal  of  either  conservatives  or  reformers.  He  does 
not  aim  to  be  edifying  or  scientifically  informing.  American 
philosophy  has  attracted  two  types  of  mind — those  to  whom 

1  Winds  of  Doctrine,  p.  56. 

3  Not  a  single  survey  of  American  philosophy  hitherto  published  mentions 
even  the  name  of  Santayana.  See  the  works  of  Riley ,  Thilly,  Perry,  and  Mclntosh 
mentioned  in  the  Bibliography. 


262  Later  Philosophy 

philosophy  is  religion  rationalized,  and  those  (a  smaller  but 
perhaps  growing  number)  to  whom  philosophy  is  a  scientific 
method  of  dealing  with  certain  general  ideas.  To  the  former  a 
combination  of  atheistic  Catholicism  and  anti-puritanic,  non- 
democratic,  aesthetic  morality,  lacking  withal  in  missionary 
enthusiasm,  typifies  almost  all  that  is  abhorrent.  To  the 
scientific  group  Santayana  is  just  a  speculative  poet  who  may 
value  science  very  highly  but  does  so  as  a  well-groomed  gentle 
man  who  knows  it  at  a  polite  distance,  afraid  to  soil  his  hands 
with  its  grimy  details. x  These  judgments  illustrate  the  great 
tragedy  of  modern  philosophy.  In  view  of  the  enormous  ex 
pansion  of  modern  knowledge  and  the  increased  rigour  of  scien 
tific  accuracy,  the  philosopher  can  no  longer  pretend  to 
universal  knowledge  and  yet  he  cannot  abandon  the  universe 
as  his  province.  Genuinely  devoted  to  philosophy's  ancient 
and  humanly  indispensable  task  of  drawing  a  picture  or  unified 
plan  of  the  world  in  which  we  live,  Santayana  is  willing  to 
abandon  the  pretension  to  scientific  accuracy  and  to  face  the 
problem  as  a  poet  or  moralist.  But  whether  because  interest 
in  a  unified  world  view  is  weak  and  the  possession  of  poetic 
faculty  such  as  Sant  ay  ana's  uncommon,  or  whether  because 
philosophy  has  been  too  long  wedded  to  logical  argumentation 
and  scientific  pretensions,  the  marked  tendency  is  to  make 
philosophy  like  one  of  the  special  sciences,  dealing  with  a 
limited  field  and  definitely  solving  problems.  As  philosophy  is 
thus  abandoning  its  old  pretensions  to  be  the  sovereign  and 
legislative  science — it  is  no  longer  taught  by  the  college  presi 
dent  himself — all  the  fields  of  concrete  information,  physics, 
economics,  politics,  psychology,  and  even  logic,  are  parcelled 
out  among  the  special  sciences  and  there  is  nothing  left  to  the 
philosopher  except  the  problem  as  to  the  nature  of  knowledge 
itself.  On  this  problem  Santayana  has  some  suggestive  hints, 
but  no  completely  elaborated  solution.  Hence  his  essential 
loneliness.  But  perhaps  every  true  philosopher,  like  the  true 
poet,  is  essentially  lonely. 

The  latest  movement  in  American  philosophy,   opposing 

1  Santayana  himself  speaks  of  that  virtual  knowledge  of  physics  which  is 
enough  for  moral  and  poetic  purposes  (Reason  in  Science,  pp.  303-304).  Such 
virtual  knowledge  does  not  save  him  from  absurd  statements  such  as  that  Plato 
had  no  physics. 


The  New  Realism  263 

certain  phases  of  pragmatism  as  well  as  of  the  older  idealism,  is 
the  tendency  known  as  the  new  realism.  The  common  element 
in  the  diverse  and  often  conflicting  doctrines  which  constitute 
this  general  tendency  is  the  opposition  to  the  Lockian.  tradi 
tion  that  the  objects  of  knowledge  are  always  our  own  ideas. 
Realism  maintains  that  the  nature  of  objects  is  not  determined 
by  our  knowing  them.  Unlike  the  older  Scotch  realism,  it  does 
not  view  the  mind  and  nature  as  two  distinct  entities,  but  tends 
rather,  like  Santayana  and  Dewey,  to  conceive  the  mind  in  an 
Aristotelian  fashion  as  the  form  or  function  of  a  natural  or 
ganic  body  responding  to  its  environment.  The  pioneers  of  this 
movement  were  Professors  Woodbridge,  Montague,  Holt,  and 
Perry. 

Frederick  J.  E.  Woodbridge  is  one  of  the  very  few  Americans 
interested  in  metaphysics  or  the  philosophy  of  nature  rather 
than  in  psychology  or  epistemology.  His  sources  are  in  Aris 
totle,  Hobbes,  and  Spinoza  rather  than  in  Locke  and  Kant. 
He  rejects  the  Lockian  tradition  that  we  must  first  examine  the 
mind  as  the  organ  of  knowledge  before  we  can  study  the  nature 
of  existing  things.  For  you  cannot  begin  the  epistemologic 
inquiry,  how  knowledge  is  possible,  without  assuming  some 
thing  already  known;  and  we  cannot  know  any  mind  entirely 
apart  from  nature.  When  the  earth  was  a  fiery  mist  there  was 
no  consciousness  on  it  at  all.  Besides,  the  question  how  in 
general  we  come  to  know  is  irrelevant  to  the  determination  of 
any  specific  issue:  as,  for  example,  why  the  flowers  bloom  in  the 
spring. 

Studying  mind  not  as  a  bare  subject  of  knowledge,  but  as  a 
natural  manifestation  in  nature,  we  find  it  to  be  not  an  addi 
tional  thing  or  term,  but  a  relation  between  things,  namely,  the 
relation  of  meaning.  Whenever  through  an  organic  body 
things  come  to  stand  in  the  relation  of  meaning  to  each  other 
we  have  consciousness.  From  this  distinctive  view  of  mind 
and  meaning,  logic  ceases  to  be  a  study  of  the  laws  of  thinking 
and  becomes  a  study  of  the  laws  of  being. 

For  one  reason  or  another,  Professor  Woodbridge  has  never 
fully  elaborated  his  views,  but  has  barely  sketched  them  in  oc 
casional  essays  and  papers.  His  personal  influence,  however, 
and  the  support  of  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and 
Scientific  Method,  of  which  he  is  the  editor,  have  undoubtedly 


264  Later  Philosophy 

helped  to  make  the  new  realism  a  strong  organized  movement. 
Such  it  became  with  the  publication  of  a  volume  of  co-opera 
tive  studies  entitled  The  New  Realism  (1912)  by  Walter  Taylor 
Marvin,  Ralph  Barton  Perry,  Edward  Gleason  Spaulding, 
W.  P.  Montague,  Edwin  Holt,  and  Walter  B.  Pitkin.  The 
new  realism  began  as  an  appeal  to  the  naive  consciousness  of 
reality ;  but  relying  naively  as  it  does  on  modern  physics,  physi 
ology,  and  experimental  biology  (as  opposed  to  the  field  and 
speculative  biology  of  the  Darwinians)  its  doctrine  necessarily 
becomes  very  technical  and  complicated.  Its  insistence  on 
rigorous  definitions  and  definitive  intellectual  solutions  to  spe 
cific  problems  has  brought  on  it  the  charge  of  being  a  new 
scholasticism.  But  whatever  the  merits  of  scholasticism — the 
renaissance  of  logical  studies  has  begun  to  reveal  some  of  them 
—the  new  realism  has  certainly  tried  to  avoid  the  tendency  of 
philosophy  to  become  a  branch  of  apologetics  or  a  brief  in  behalf 
of  supposed  valuable  interests  of  humanity.  In  this  a  technical 
vocabulary  and  the  ethically  neutral  symbols  of  mathematics 
are  a  great  aid. 

The  period  covered  by  the  greater  portion  of  this  chapter  is 
too  near  us  to  make  a  just  appreciation  of  its  achievement 
likely  at  this  time.  In  the  main  it  has  been  dominated  by  two 
interests,  the  theologic  and  the  psychologic.  l  The  development 
during  this  period  has  been  to  weaken  the  former  and  to  deepen 
but  narrow  the  latter  and  make  it  more  and  more  technical. 
For  this  reason  the  philosophers  covered  in  this  chapter  have 
as  yet  exerted  little  influence  on  the  general  thought  of  the  coun 
try.  The  general  current  of  American  economic,  political,  and 
legal  thought  has  until  very  recently  been  entirely  dominated  by 
our  traditional  eighteenth- century  individualism  or  natural-law 
philosophy.  Neither  does  our  general  literature,  religious  life, 
or  current  scientific  procedure  as  yet  show  any  distinctive  in 
fluence  of  our  professional  philosophy.  But  it  must  be  re 
membered  that  all  our  universities  are  comparatively  young 

1  The  history  of  philosophy  has  occupied  a  large  portion  of  American  philoso 
phic  instruction  and  writing.  But  apart  from  the  books  of  Albee,  Husik,  Riley,  and 
Salter  (mentioned  in  the  bibliography  to  this  chapter)  and  articles  by  Lovejoy 
on  Kant,  and  on  the  history  of  evolution,  American  philosophy  has  no  noteworthy 
achievement  to  its  credit — certainly  nothing  comparable  to  the  historical  works 
of  Caird,  Bosanquet,  Benn,  or  Whittaker,  not  to  mention  the  great  German  and 
French  achievements  in  this  field. 


Conclusion  265 

institutions  and  our  university-trained  men  numerically  an  al 
most  insignificant  portion  of  our  total  population.  In  the  field 
of  education  William  T.  Harris  and  after  him  Dewey  have  un 
doubtedly  exerted  potent  influences,  and  it  looks  as  if  American 
legal  thought  is  certain  to  be  profoundly  impressed  by  Roscoe 
Pound,  who  draws  some  of  his  inspiration  from  philosophic 
pragmatism  as  well  as  from  Ward's  social  theories. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  European  culture,  America  has 
certainly  not  produced  a  philosopher  as  influential  as  was 
Willard  Gibbs  in  the  realm  of  physics  or  Lester'  Ward  in  the 
realms  of  sociology.  Though  Ward  and  even  Gibbs  may  with 
some  justice  be  claimed  as  philosophers,  this  can  be  done  only 
by  disregarding  the  unmistakable  tendency  to  divorce  technical 
philosophy  entirely  from  physical  and  social  theory.  James, 
however,  is  undoubtedly  a  European  force,  and,  in  a  lesser 
degree,  Baldwin,  Royce,  and  Dewey.  Serious  and  competent 
students  in  Germany,  Italy,  and  Great  Britain  have  also  recog 
nized  the  permanent  importance  of  C.  S.  Peirce's  contribution 
to  the  field  of  logic.  History  frequently  shows  philosophers  who 
receive  no  adequate  recognition  except  from  later  generations, 
but  it  is  hazardous  to  anticipate  the.  judgment  of  posterity. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

The   Drama,    1860-1918 

FOR  the  ten  years  preceding  the  advent  of  Bronson  Howard, 
the  American  drama  settled  upon  staid  and  not  very 
vigorous  times.  The  Civil  War  was  not  conducive  to 
original  production  at  the  time;  and  its  influence  was  not  great 
upon  the  character  of  the  amusement  in  the  American  theatre. 
Only  after  many  years  had  passed,  and  after  local  and  national 
feeling  had  been  allowed  to  cool,  did  the  Civil  War  become  a 
topic  for  the  stage, — in  such  dramas  as  William  Gillette's 
Held  by  the  Enemy  (Madison  Square  Theatre,  1 6  August,  1886), x 
Shenandoah  (Star  Theatre,  9  September,  1889)  by  Bronson 
Howard,  The  Girl  I  Left  Behind  Me  (Empire  Theatre,  25  Janu 
ary,  1893)  by  David  Belasco  and  Franklyn  Fyles,  The  Heart  of 
Maryland  (Herald  Square  Theatre,  22  October,  1895)  by  David 
Belasco,  William  Gillette's  Secret  Service  (Garrick  Theatre,  5 
October,  1896),  James  A.  Herne's  Griffith  Davenport  (Washing 
ton,  Lafayette  Square  Theatre,  16  January,  1899),  Barbara 
Frietchie  (Criterion  Theatre,  24  October,  1899)  by  Clyde  Fitch. 
No  one  dared  to  take  the  moral  issue  of  the  war  and  treat  it 
seriously,  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  (first  played  24 
August,  1852)  having  ante-dated  the  internecine  struggle. 
Even  today,  the  subject  of  the  Negro  and  his  relation  with  the 
white  is  one  warily  handled  by  the  American  dramatist.  Dion 
Boucicault's  The  Octoroon  (Winter  Garden,  5  December,  1859), 
was  typical  of  the  way  that  dramatist  had  of  making  hay  out 
of  the  popular  sunshine  of  others.  William  DeMille  wanted 
to  treat  of  the  Uegro's  social  isolation,  but  compromised  when 
he  came  to  write  Strongheart  (Hudson  Theatre,  30  January, 

1  Unless  it  is  otherwise  stated,  the  theatres  and  dates  given  with  the  titles  of 
plays  apply  to  initial  New  York  productions. 

266 


The  Civil  War  Period  267 

1905)  by  making  the  hero  an  Indian;  and  he  later  fell  into  the 
conventional  way  of  treating  the  war  when  he  wrote  The  Warrens 
of  Virginia  (Belasco  Theatre,  3  December,  1907).  The  more 
sensational  aspects  of  the  negro  question,  as  treated  by  Thomas 
Dixon  in  The  Clansman  (Liberty  Theatre,  8  January,  1906) 
were  wisely  softened  and  made  into  an  elaborate  record  of  the 
Civil  War,  in  the  panoramic  moving  picture,  The  Birth  of  a 
Nation  (New  York,  1915).  Though  Ridgely  Torrence,  in  a 
series  of  one-act  plays  (Granny  Maumee,  The  Rider  of  Dreams, 
and  Simon  the  Cyrenian,  Garden  Theatre,  5  April,  1917),  has 
sought  poetically  to  exploit  Wegro  psychology,  the  only  Ameri 
can  dramatist  who  has  approached  the  topic  boldly,  melo 
dramatically,  and  effectively,  thus  far,  has  been  Edward 
Sheldon,  in  The  Nigger  (New  Theatre,  4  December,  1909). 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  enumeration  that  during  the  period 
immediately  preceding  the  Civil  War  the  issues  of  the  coming 
struggle  were  not  treated  for  propaganda  purposes,  as  were  the 
issues  of  the  Revolutionary  War  in  our  pre-national  drama. 
The  fact  is,  the  features  of  the  American  theatre,  and  of  the 
plays  on  the  American  stage,  preceding  the  year  1870,  were 
fairly  well  predetermined  by  the  strong  personalities  among  the 
managers  and  actors:  by  the  distinct  predilection,  among 
theatre-going  peoples,  for  plays  to  fit  the  temperaments  of  the 
reigning  stage  favourites,  and  by  the  styles  and  fashions  that 
emanated  from  London  and  Paris.  Neither  the  Wallacks, 
John  Brougham,  W.  E.  Burton,  nor  Augustin  Daly  showed,  by 
their  actual  productions,  that  their  tastes  were  native,  al 
though  Brougham  was  led,  through  burlesque,  to  exercise  his 
Irish  wit  on  the  land  of  his  adoption,  and  Daly,  as  shown  by  his 
recent  biographer,  attempted  to  turn  such  literary  workers  as 
Bret  Harte,  Mark  Twain,  Henry  James,  and  Howells  to  dra 
matic  writing.  Men  expert  in  other  literary  forms  have  seldom 
fulty  grasped  the  demands  of  the  theatre.  Thomas  Bailey  Al- 
drich  had  his  Judith  of  BethuUa  produced  (Boston,  Tremont 
Theatre,  13  October,  1904)  and  his  biographer  says  that  in 
New  York  "it  failed  to  take  the  taste  of  the  large  luxurious 
audiences  that  throng  the  Broadway  theatres  betwixt  dinner 
and  bedtime."  But  the  poetic  purple  patches  of  Aldrich's 
verse  might  be  another  explanation  for  its  short  life  on  the 
stage. 


268  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

When  1860  dawned,  Dion  Boucicault  (1822-1890)  and  John 
Brougham  (1810-1880)  reigned  supreme  in  American  popu 
larity,  and  they  were  both  Irish.  The  former  had  yet  to  do  his 
most  popular  and  characteristic  pieces,  in  which  he  won  de 
served  success  both  as  an  actor  and  playwright :  to  read  Jessie 
Brown;  or,  The  Relief  of  Lucknow  (Wallack's  Theatre,  22  Feb 
ruary,  1858)  and  The  Colleen  Bawn  (Laura  Keene's  Theatre, 
29  March,  1860),  and  to  compare  them  with  the  later  Arrah-na- 
Pogue;  or,  The  Wicklow  Wedding  (London,  22  March,  1865)  and 
The  Shaughraun  (Wallack's  Theatre,  14  November,  1874),  is 
to  sound  the  genial  depths  of  a  flexible  workman,  who  could  find 
it  as  easy  to  shape  a  drama  for  Laura  Keene  as  to  re-fashion 
Charles  Burke's  version  of  Washington  Irving's  Rip  Van 
Winkle  for  presentation  by  Jefferson  (London,  Adelphi,  4 
September,  1865).  One  would  say  of  Boucicault,  as  one  would 
claim  of  John  Brougham,  that  his  local  influence  was  due  to 
local  popularity  rather  than  to  any  impetus  he  gave  to  native 
drama.  While  Brougham's  Po-ca-hon-tas;  or,  The  Gentle 
Savage  (Burton's  Lyceum,  24  December,  1855)  and  his  Colum 
bus  et  Filibuster o  (Burton's  Lyceum,  December,  1857)  exhibited 
the  good-nature  of  his  irony;  while  his  dramatizations  of 
Dickens's  David  Copper  field  and  Dombey  and  Son  were  in  accord 
with  the  popular  taste  that  hailed  W.  E.  Burton's  Cap'n  Cuttle 
— these  dramatic  products  were  exotic  to  the  American  drama, 
while  reflecting  the  fashion  of  the  American  stage. 

Yet  nothing  Boucicault  enjoyed  better  than  to  descant  on 
the  future  of  the  American  stage.  Like  Palmer,  like  Daly,  he 
was  continuallyjwjitingL  about  the  reasons  for  its  poverty  and 
jhcT  possibilities  of  its  improvement.  No  one  of  these  men, 
however,  had  any  real  faith  in  the  American  drama  or  in  the 
native  subject.  Edwin  Forrest  (1806-1872)  encouraged  the 
Philadelphia  group  of  writers, x  but  the  topics  chosen  by  Bird, 
Conrad,  Stone,  Smith,  Miles,  and  Boker  were  largely  in  accord 
with  English  romantic  models.  Stone's  Metamora;  or,  The  Last 
of  the  Wampanoags  spoke  the  language  of  James  Sheridan 
Knowles ;  Boker's  Francesca  da  Rimini  reflected  the  accents  of 
the  Elizabethans.  Forrest,  therefore,  encouraged  the  American 
drama  indirectly.  Charlotte  Cushman  (1816-1876)  never  even 
went  so  far,  though  her  friendship  with  Bryant,  R.  H.  Stod- 

1  vSee  Book  II,  Chap.  n. 


Actors  269 

dard,  Sidney  Lanier,  together  with  the  esteem  in  which  she  was 
held  by  all  intellectual  America,  would  show  that  she  was  not 
aloof  from  the  life  of  the  time.  One  looks  in  vain  through  the 
repertories  of  the  great  actors  for  that  encouragement  of  the 
American  drama  which  it  most  needed  as  an  "infant  industry." 
Edwin  Booth  (1833-1893)  at  the  time  the  assassination  of 
Lincoln  by  John  Wilkes  Booth,  14  April,  1865,  drove  him  tem 
porarily  from  the  stage  had  built  for  himself  a  permanent 
reputation  in  Shakespeare,  which  he  resumed  and  maintained 
until  his  last  appearance  as  Hamlet,  4  April,  1891.  Even  as 
a  manager,  he  chose  English  plays;  and  his  close  associate, 
Lawrence  Barrett  (1838-1891),  was  of  the  same  mind,  though 
he  appeared  in  Boker's  Francesco,  da  Rimini  (Chicago,  14  Sep 
tember,  1882)  and  W.  D.  Howells's  version,  from  the  Spanish, 
of  Yorick's  Love  (Cleveland,  26  October,  1878). 

Though  as  a  family  of  managers  the  tradition  of  the  Wai- 
lacks  was  distinctly  English,  Lester  Wallack  (1819-1888) 
romantically  masked  his  old  English  comedy  manner  beneath 
local  colour  in  Central  Park  (14  February,  1861);  but  his  dash 
was  happiest  in  such  pieces,  of  his  own  concoction,  as  The 
Romance  of  a  Poor  Young  Man  (adapted  by  him  24  January, 
1860)  and  Rosedale  (produced  30  September,  1863).  To  the 
time  of  his  last  appearance  (29  May,  1886),  he  was  true  to  his 
English  taste.  To  see  Lester  Wallack  at  his  best,  one  had  to 
see  him  as  Shakespeare's  Benedick  or  Mercutio;  as  Dumas's 
D'Artagnan,  or  in  the  social  suavity  of  the  Robertson  and  con 
temporary  French  drama. 

The  British  tradition  seemed  so  natural  to  Lester  Wallack 
[writes  Brander  Matthews],  so  inevitable,  that  when  Bronson 
Howard,  in  his  'prentice  days,  took  him  a  piece  called  Drum-Taps, 
— which  was  to  supply  more  than  one  comedy-scene  to  the  later 
Shenandoah, — the  New  York  manager  did  not  dare  to  risk  a  play 
on  so  American  a  theme  as  the  Civil  War.  He  returned  it  to  the 
young  author,  saying,  "Couldn't  you  make  it  the  Crimea?" 

In  1860,  the  comedian  W.  E.  Burton  died;  his  last  appear 
ance  was  as  Micawber,  15  October,  1859 — a  fitting  end,  as  he 
was  in  the  forefront  of  the  Dickens  interpreters.  Dramatiza 
tions  of  Dickens  in  America  kept  pace  with  those  in  England. 
It  is  well  to  emphasize  Burton's  stage  career,  because  it  brings 


270  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

to  mind  that  the  American  theatre  of  that  time  was  rich  in 
comedians — all  of  them  of  the  old  school  which  looked  for 
character  parts  to  suit  the  old  comedy  style  of  acting.  It  was 
unfortunate  for  the  American  drama  which  began  to  develop 
after  1860  that  it  started  just  when  the  old-time  stock  com 
pany  tradition  passed  from  Burton  and  Brougham  and  Laura 
Keene  to  Mrs.  John  Drew  (1820-1897),  who  assumed  control 
of  the  Philadelphia  Arch  Street  Theatre  on  3  August,  1861 — 
inaugurating  a  brilliant  record  which  began  to  fade  in  1877, 
just  as  Bronson  Howard  was  gaining  in  his  pioneer  fight  for 
the  American  dramatist,  and  just  as  the  modern  business  of 
the  theatre  began  to  challenge  consideration. 

The  reasons  for  the  poverty  of  American  plays  in  the  decade 
1 860-1 870  are  thus  readily  suggested.  Our  modern  native  drama 
did  not  grow  out  of  literature,  as  it  did  in  England  and  in  France ; 
it  grew  out  of  the  theatre,  and  so  it  had  to  bide  its  time  until  the 
theatre  found  a  need  for  it. 

Tradition,  on  the  whole,  is  the  element  which  most  handi 
capped  the  American  drama.  Daly  scanned  the  German 
horizon  for  adaptations,  as  Dunlap  had  done  before  him;  A. 
M.  Palmer  was  as  eager  for  the  French  play  as  were  the  English 
managers  abroad,  who  would  complacently  have  kept  T.  W. 
Robertson  and  Tom  Taylor  literary  hacks  at  ten  pounds  a  play, 
if  they  had  not  rebelled.  When  one  puts  down  the  titles  of 
dramas  which  Augustin  Daly  (1838-1899)  actually  had  a 
literary  hand  in,  it  is  surprising  how  far  afield  from  the  Ameri 
can  spirit  he  could  get ;  with  him  adaptation  meant  change  of 
locality  only,  and  though  one  can  imagine  what  the  scenic 
artist  might  do  with  his  "flats"  in  picturing  New  York  during 
the  time  opera  reigned  on  Fourteenth  Street,  one  can  but  re 
servedly  call  Boucicault's  The  Poor  of  New  York  (Wallack's 
Theatre,  8  December,  1857)  °r  Daly's  Under  the  Gaslight  (The 
New  York  Theatre,  12  August,  1867)  native  dramas;  they 
were  domestic  perversions  of  the  same  French  source.  The 
fact  of  the  matter  is  that  Bronson  Howard,  who  came  under 
the  direct  influence  of  the  French  drama  of  the  time,  felt,  when 
he  began  to  write  such  a  comedy  as  Saratoga  (Fifth  Avenue 
Theatre,  21  December,  1870)  that  he  must  follow  French  con 
vention;  and  when  he  reconstructed  The  Banker's  Daughter 
on  the  ground-plan  of  Lillian's  Last  Love  his  originality  was 


Actors  271 

tied  hand  and  foot.  He  was  borrowing  French  villains,  and 
making  his  American  men  exclaim  "egad." 

Daly  adapted  and  wrote  over  four  dozen  plays.  Among  his 
so-called  original  attempts,  this  generation  can  recall  only 
Divorce  (Fifth  Avenue  Theatre,  5  September,  1871),  Horizon 
(Olympic  Theatre,  25  March,  1871),  and  Pique  (Fifth  Avenue 
Theatre,  14  December,  1875);  among  his  adaptations,  Leah  the 
Forsaken  (Niblo's  Garden,  19  January,  1863),  Frou-Frou  (Fifth 
Avenue  Theatre,  12  February,  1870),  and  Article  47  (Fifth 
Avenue  Theatre,  2  April,  1872).  But  in  these,  as  in  most  of  his 
attempts,  he  does  not  deserve  any  more  claim  to  native  ori 
ginality  than  Matilda  Heron  does  for  her  version  of  Camille 
(Wallack's  Broome  St.  Theatre,  22  January,  1857),  or  A.  M. 
Palmer  for  his  productions  of  D'Ennery  and  Cormon's  A 
Celebrated  Case,  adapted  by  A.  R.  Cazauran  (Boston  Museum, 
28  January,  1878),  and  D'Ennery's  The  Two  Orphans,  adapted 
by  Hart  Jackson  (Union  Square  Theatre,  21  December,  1874). 
What  he  did  so  successfully,  and  what  Clyde  Fitch  did  so  well 
in  later  years,  was  to  create  roles  for  the  special  qualities  in  his 
players:  he  wrote  Frou-Frou  for  Agnes  Ethel,  Article  47  for 
Clara  Morris,  and  Pique  for  Fanny  Davenport. 

The  emotional  play  went  hand  in  hand  with  the  emotional 
actress,  and  one  fails  to  find  Clara  Morris  showing  a  penchant 
for  the  American  drama;  her  success  in  Miss  Mutton,  a  play 
built  on  a  French  version  of  East  Lynne  (Union  Square  Theatre, 
20  November,  1876),  and  her  Cora  in  Article  47  measured  her 
taste  and  training,  rather  than  her  Lucy  Carter  in  Howard's 
Saratoga,  which  Daly  produced.  Palmer  and  Daly  gave  their 
players  large  doses  of  foreign  drama  or  the  classics.  In  such 
tradition  Fanny  Davenport  flourished,  and  Ada  Rehan  was 
reared. 

This  was  an  unsettled  period,  therefore,  of  taste  and  mana 
gerial  inclination ;  it  is  necessary  to  pick  up  the  scant  threads  of 
American  drama  and  hold  them  fast  lest  they  be  forgotten. 
Such  a  play  as  Densmore's  pirated  version  of  The  Gilded  Age, 
in  which  John  T.  Raymond  made  such  a  success  during  the 
early  seventies,  is  scarcely  known,  even  by  Mark  Twain's 
biographer;  Benjamin  Woolf's  The  Mighty  Dollar  (Park Theatre, 
6  September,  1875),  once  the  talk  of  the  American  theatre,  is,  so 
far  as  Woolf's  family  is  concerned,  non-existent. 


272  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

Up  to  the  time  I  started  in  1870  [wrote  Bronson  Howard  in 
1906],  American  plays  had  been  written  only  sporadically  here  and 
there  by  men  and  women  who  never  met  each  other.  .  .  .  Except 
for  Daly,  I  was  practically  alone ;  but  he  offered  me  the  same  oppor 
tunity  and  promise  for  the  future  that  he  gave  to  himself.  From 
him  developed  a  school  of  managers  willing  and  eager  to  produce 
American  play  son  American  subjects.  .  .  .  It  was  not  until  about 
1890  that  they  [the  writers]  suddenly  discovered  themselves  as  a 
body  of  dramatists.  This  was  at  a  private  supper  given  ...  to  the 
veteran  playwright,  Charles  Gay  lor. 

It  was  on  this  occasion  that  Howard  founded  the  American 
Dramatists  Club. 

At  the  same  time  other  forces  were  preparing  the  way  for 
the  American  drama,  and  these,  viewed  from  a  distance,  are 
significant  when  one  knows  what  actually  followed  them.  In 
San  Francisco,  David  Belasco  was  serving  his  novitiate  as  an 
actor,  a  playwright,  a  manager,  and  was  coming  into  direct  con 
tact  with  the  actors  of  the  East,  who  travelled  West  for  regular 
seasons.  He  was  writing  mining-camp  melodrama,  which  was 
afterwards  to  flower  into  The  Girl  of  the  Golden  West,  and  he 
was  experimenting  in  all  the  subterfuges  of  stagecraft.  The 
Frohman  brothers  were  in  their  rough-and-tumble  days,  when 
Tony  Pastor,  Harrigan  and  Hart,  the  "Black  Crook,"  and 
the  Callender  Minstrels  were  the  ideals  of  managerial  success. 
Close  upon  Charles  and  Daniel  Frohman  came  David  Belasco 
to  New  York  in  the  later  seventies.  They  arrived  at  a  moment 
which  was  propitious,  for  Bronson  Howard,  rightly  designated 
the  Dean  of  American  Drama,  as  Dunlap  is  called  the  Father 
of  the  American  Theatre,  had  insisted  on  A.  M.  Palmer's  ad 
vertising  his  play,  The  Banker's  Daughter,  as  an  American 
Comedy,  and  he  stood  for  the  rights  of  the  native  dramatist 
as  opposed  to  the  foreigner.  It  was  a  long  time  in  the  mana 
gerial  careers  of  either  Daniel  or  Charles  Frohman  before  they 
could  be  brought  to  think  that  the  word  "American"  was  of 
commercial  advantage;  and  this  attitude  of  theirs  is  the  first 
suggestion  of  the  future  estimate  of  the  theatre  as  a  commer 
cial  enterprise,  against  which  all  later  native  art  has  had  to 
contend. 

These  days  of  the  theatre  have  been  chronicled  by  three 
critics:  Laurence  Hutton,  Brander  Matthews,  and  William 


Brander  Matthews  273 

Winter.  Winter1  had  a  long  perspective  in  theatre  attendance, 
and  left  available  a  large  body  of  journalistic  reporting ;  it  may 
be  said  that  from  1854  to  the  time  of  his  death  in  1917  his  pen 
was  recording  theatrical  matters  continually.  But  he  was  not 
concerned  with  the  development  of  an  American  drama;  his 
professional  duty  was  to  take  the  theatre  as  it  came  to  him 
nightly;  to  estimate  it  as  a  presented  thing,  and  to  measure  its 
acting  value.  His  attitude,  as  becomes  a  dramatic  critic  for 
newspapers,  was  not  concerned  primarily  with  the  literary  side. 
Therefore,  neither  his  The  Wallet  of  Time  nor  his  other  volumi 
nous  works  give  one  a  comprehensive  view  of  American  drama. 
Laurence  Hutton,2  on  the  other  hand,  was  interested  in  the 
appearance  of  American  characteristics  on  the  boards,  and  no 
more  suggestive  chapters  can  be  read  than  in  his  Curiosities  of 
the  American  Theatre.  Certainly,  his  close  friend  and  colla 
borator,  Brander  Matthews,  must  have  had  Hutton  in  mind 
when  he  compiled  his  essays  A  Book  About  the  Theatre.  It  is  to 
Professor  Matthews — who  has  held  the  chair  of  Dramatic 
Literature  at  Columbia  University  since  1900,  and  who  is  the 
author  of  many  poems,  stories,  and  novels,  as  well  as  an  essay 
ist  of  wide  range — that  we  must  turn  for  estimates  of  American 
dramatists  as  distinct  personalities  in  a  native  form  of  art.  He 
has  done  for  the  American  play  what  he  has  done  for  the  sub 
ject  of  drama  in  general:  popularized  the  philosophy  of  the 
theatre.  That  service  is  of  inestimable  worth.  He  has  edited 
old  texts,  he  helped  to  found  The  Players  and  The  Dunlap 
Society;  but,  unfortunately,  he  has  written  no  book  on  Ameri 
can  drama.  Yet  his  volumes  of  essays  have  full  reference  to  the 
American  theatre.  He  has  a  more  organic  sense  of  its  develop 
ment  than  either  Hutton  or  Winter.  In  his  reminiscences, 
These  Many  Years  (1917),  we  not  only  have  his  love  of  the  play 
well  depicted,  and  his  reflection  of  the  New  York,  London,  and 
Paris  theatres  during  the  period  just  sketched;  but  there  is  also 
the  record  of  his  own  efforts  as  a  dramatist — efforts  coincident 
with  those  of  Howells  and  Howard  and  James.  One  obtains  fleet 
ing  glimpses  of  the  managerial  guilty  conscience  regarding  the 
fate  of  American  drama,  in  the  efforts  made  by  managers  to 
engage  the  literary  world  in  the  interest  of  the  theatre.  In 
1878  Professor  Matthews  wrote  Margery's  Lovers,  produced  in 
'  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xm.  >  Ibid. 

VOL.  Ill — 18 


274  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

1887  at  an  author's  matinee  at  the  Madison  Square  Theatre, 
by  A.  M.  Palmer,  who  likewise  presented  George  Parsons 
Lathrop's  Elaine  and  Howells's  dramatization  of  A  Foregone 
Conclusion.  In  similar  fashion  was  Decision  of  the  Court  pre 
sented,  23  March,  1893,  by  the  Theatre  of  Arts  and  Letters. 
This  organization  also  offered  Mary  E.  Wilkins's  Giles  Corey, 
Frank  R.  Stockton's  Squirrel  Inn,  and  Clyde  Fitch's  Harvest 
—which  latter  was  afterwards  evolved  into  The  Moth  and  the 
Flame.  Professor  Matthews,  as  an  American  dramatist,  has 
scarcely  exhibited  the  qualities  or  won  the  fame  which  belong 
to  him  as  a  professor  of  Dramatic  Literature. x  The  reason  may 
be,  as  Bronson  Howard  declared  after  the  experience  they  had 
together  in  collaboration  over  Peter  Stuyvesant  (2  October,  1 899) , 
that  Professor  Matthews,  used  to  viewing  the  finished  product 
in  the  theatre,  was  not  used  to  the  constant  labour  which  always 
attends  the  writing  and  further  re-writing  of  a  play. 

Bronson  Howard  (1842-1908)  came  to  the  theatre  with  a 
full  journalistic  career  behind  him.  He  had  the  serious  mind 
of  a  student,  the  keen,  polished  culture  of  a  man  of  the  world. 
To  play-writing  he  brought  a  convention  typical  of  the  day 
and  a  constructive  ability  which  made  him  always  an  excellent 
workman  but  which  often  prompted  him  to  sacrifice  thought- 
fulness  for  stage  effectiveness  and  solid  characterization  for 
effervescent  sprightliness.  His  style,  so  well  contrasted  in 
Saratoga  (21  December,  1870),  The  Banker's  Daughter  (30 
September,  1878),  The  Young  Mrs.  Winthrop  (9  October,  1882), 
and  The  Henrietta  (26  September,  1887),  is  limited  by  all  the 
reticence,  the  lack  of  frankness  which  the  seventies  and  eighties 
courted.  In  other  words,  he  went  on  the  supposition  that  so 
long  as  one  was  French  one  could  be  broad,  but  that  Americans 
would  never  stand  for  too  much  latitude  of  morals  from  Ameri 
can'  characters.  But,  as  a  pioneer  in  the  field  of  the  drama  of 
contemporary  manners,  Howard's  plays  are  interesting  and 
significant.  His  treatment  of  capital  and  labour,  as  shown  in 
Baron  Rudolph  (25  October,  1887),  his  reflection  of  business 
stress,  in  The  Henrietta, — these  were,  in  their  day,  novel  de 
partures.  But  his  plays  were  none  of  them  organically  close 
knit.  It  was  easy  to  make  Saratoga  ready  for  consumption  in 

1  For  Professor  Matthews's  important  writing  on  the  short  story  see  Book 
III,  Chap.  vi. 


Bronson  Howard  275 

London  theatres  by  calling  it  Brighton.  In  1886  Howard  de 
livered  a  lecture  before  the  students  of  Harvard  University, 
illustrating  the  general  laws  of  drama,  and  outlining  the  con 
ventional  traditions  against  which  he  worked.  He  was  never 
able  to  escape  them.  Shenandoah  (9  September,  1889)  was 
more  national  than  most  of  his  work.  To  its  preparation  he 
brought  that  scholarly  orderliness  of  mind  which  characterized 
the  man  in  conversation. 

The  successes  of  those  early  days  when  Howard  was  knock 
ing  at  the  doors  of  Daly  and  Palmer,  were  fitful,  and,  though 
they  are  known  by  name  today,  their  lack  of  a  true  note  of 
reality  and  their  stereotyped  romanticism  make  them  im 
possible  either  as  reading  dramas  or  as  revivals.  Joaquin  Mil 
ler's  The  Danites  (Broadway  Theatre,  22  August,  1877),  J. 
Cheever  Goodwin's  burlesque  Evangeline  (Niblo's  Garden, 
27  July,  1874),  Bartley  Campbell's  My  Partner  (Union  Square, 
16  September,  1879),  Wallack's  Rosedale  (Wallack's  Theatre, 
30  September,  1863),  Olive  Logan's  Surf  (Daly's  Theatre,  12 
January,  1870), — these  were  the  types  of  native  successes. 
None  of  them  exploited  deep-founded  American  characteristics, 
though  they  suggested  the  melodrama  of  American  life.  It 
was  only  by  individualizing  and  localizing  that  the  American 
drama,  previous  to  1860,  became  distinct.  Only  by  these  tradi 
tional  marks  could  one  recognize  American  drama  of  the  early 
days.  Until  Howard's  attempt  at  reality,  New  York  ' '  society  " 
drama  was  either  English  or  else  crudely  rustic,  like  Asa  Trench- 
ard  in  Taylor's  Our  American  Cousin  (Laura  Keene's  Theatre, 
1 8  October,  1858).  Over  into  this  period  of  transition  came  the 
Yankee,  the  backwoodsman,  the  humorous  lawyer  of  "  flush 
times. "  As  Howard  said,  writing  of  the  American  drama,  the 
native  dramatists  were  concerned  with  American  character, 
hence  Solon  Shingle,  Colonel  Sellers,  Judge  Bardwell  Slote,  and 
Mose  the  fire-boy.  Without  them,  we  should  not  have  had 
Joshua  Whitcomb,  Davy  Crockett,  and  Pudd'nhead  Wilson. 
Perhaps  one  of  the  most  typically  American  pieces  produced 
in  this  period  of  the  seventies  was  Frank  Murdock's  Davy 
Crockett  (New  York,  Niblo's  Garden,  9  March,  1874),  reminiscent 
in  its  colour  of  the  elder  Hackett's  Colonel  Nimrod  Wildfire, 
and  a  romantic  forerunner  of  Moody 's  The  Great  Divide.  Mrs. 
Bateman's  Self  finds  continuation  in  Howard's  Saratoga  and 


276  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

Mrs.  Logan's  Surf,  while  these  point  the  way  to  Langdon 
Mitchell's  The  New  York  Idea,  written  when  dialogue  for  the 
theatre  had  grown  in  literary  form  and  feeling,  when  a  sense  of 
atmosphere  created  an  ironic  response  to  fashionable  manners 
and  customs. 

It  is  because  of  this  isolated,  accidental  character  of  Ameri 
can  drama  that  Bronson  Howard's  position  was  all  the  more 
remarkable  in  1870,  and  thereafter.  Yet  his  plays  are  dated. 
It  may  be  that  some  day  Saratoga  can  be  made  over  into  a  cos 
tume  play,  though  it  was  written  as  an  up-to-date  "society" 
comedy.  But  the  difference  between  it  and  Mitchell's  The 
New  York  Idea  (19  November,  1906)  is  that  the  latter  contains 
some  of  the  universal  depth  that  mere  change  in  time  and  con 
dition  will  not  alter. 

The  theatre  of  the  sixties  and  seventies  was  surfeited  with 
the  strong  melodrama  and  romantic  violences  which  suited  a 
special  robust  acting.  When  David  Belasco  turned  East,  as 
stock  dramatist  for  The  Madison  Square  Theatre,  a  house  to 
compete  with  the  traditions  of  the  Union  Square  and  Daly's, 
there  came  into  vogue  a  form  of  drama  which  allowed  of  a  quiet, 
domestic  atmosphere — in  imitation  of  what  Robertson,  Byron, 
and  their  British  contemporaries  were  striving  for  in  London. 
The  "milk  and  water"  acting  which  was  here  introduced  was 
what  made  of  The  Young  Mrs.  Winthrop  (Madison  Square 
Theatre,  9  October,  1882)  such  a  phenomenal  success.  It  was 
this  tradition,  not  new  but  novel,  which  evolved  into  the  present 
naturalistic  method  of  acting.  But  the  Madison  Square  Thea 
tre  gave  impetus  to  something  more  than  a  school  of  acting. 
In  its  intimate  management  it  furthered  the  dramatic  writing 
of  Steele  MacKaye,  whose  Hazel  Kirke  (4  February,  1880) 
was  written  expressly  for  the  stock  company  gathered  there, 
and  it  brought  Belasco  and  De  Mille  together  in  preparation 
for  their  later  collaboration  when,  with  Daniel  Frohman,  they 
went  over  to  the  Lyceum  Theatre  and  in  rapid  succession 
wrote  The  Wife  (i  November,  1887),  Lord  Chumley  (21  August, 
1888),  The  Charity  Ball  (19  November,  1889),  Men  and  Women 
(21  October,  1890). 

Steele  MacKaye  (1844-1894)  while  with  the  Madison 
Square  management  won  popularity  as  a  playwright,  but  none 
of  his  pieces  is  widely  known  to  the  theatre  now,  except  by 


The  MacKayes  277 

name.  Rose  Michel  (23  November,  1875),  Hazel  Kirke,  Dako- 
lar  (6  April,  1885),  and  Paul  Kauvar  (24  December,  1887)  are 
among  those  that  linger  in  memory  as  examples  of  picturesque 
melodrama  created  for  a  certain  type  of  stage  effect,  with 
emotionalism  of  the  Dumas  kind.  MacKaye  once  wrote :  "The 
master  playwright  combines  the  constructive  faculty  of  the 
mechanic  and  the  analytical  mind  of  the  philosopher,  with 
the  aesthetic  instinct  of  a  poet,  and  the  ethical  ardour  of  an 
apostle."  This  is  an  all-inclusive  definition,  which  MacKaye 
never  encompassed  in  any  of  his  plays,  but  which  in  himself 
was  exemplified  by  the  ardour  of  his  temperament  and  the 
visionary  character  of  his  imagination.  His  son  Percy  might 
be  said  to  have  the  same  ideal,  to  which  can  be  added  a  passion 
for  civic  art.  He  has  tried  to  express  this  latter  element  in  his 
pageants,  but  has  never  successfully  done  so.  For  Percy  Mac 
Kaye  is  one  of  the  most  aristocratic  of  writers — farthest  removed 
from  a  thorough  realization  of  the  emotions  of  the  crowd.  His 
poetic  drama  is  academic  in  its  scholarly  allusions.  One  only 
has  to  read  Sappho  and  Phaon  (21  October,  1907)  to  realize 
this.  As  striking  examples  of  the  excellence  of  his  dramatic 
force  there  are  The  Scarecrow  (produced  17  January,  1911), 
Jeanne  d'Arc  (28  January,  1907),  and  A  Thousand  Years  Ago 
( i  December,  1913).  The  Scarecrow,  based  on  Hawthorne,  ranks 
high  among  American  plays.  MacKaye 's  political  philosophy, 
earnest  but  hazy,  is  seen  in  his  Mater  (25  September,  1908) ;  his 
socio-scientific  approach  is  measured  in  To-Morrow  (31  October, 
1913);  his  imaginative  breadth  and  picturesque  enthusiasm 
are  evident  in  any  one  of  his  masques  and  pageants,  The  Canter 
bury  Pilgrims  (Gloucester,  Mass.,  3  August,  1909),  Sanctuary 
(12  September,  1913),  Saint  Louis  (St.  Louis,  28  May,  1914), 
and  Caliban  (New  York,  25  May,  1916).  But  all  told,  MacKaye 
has  not  reached  the  ideal  he  emphasizes  in  his  essays  on  the 
theatre.  If  the  civic  theatre  ever  becomes  a  feature  of  Ameri 
can  theatrical  history,  he  will  occupy,  unless  he  changes  his 
method  of  thought  and  character  of  technique,  the  peculiar 
position  of  being  a  pioneer  believer  in  its  efficacy,  and  of  being 
unable  in  his  plays  to  sound  the  true  democratic  note.  The 
sense  of  American  history  is  uppermost  in  his  mind,  but  at 
present  his  use  of  materials  is  distinctly  caviare  to  the  popular 
theatregoer. 


278  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

By  the  eighties  there  had  been  established  in  New  York 
the  nucleus  of  what  was  to  be  known  as  the  modern  American 
theatre.  Daniel  Frohman  was  at  the  Madison  Square,  his 
brother  Charles  was  on  the  road  with  Wallack  successes,  and 
was  thus  early  exhibiting  his  ability  to  pick  plays  and  players 
by  corralling  Bronson  Howard's  Shenandoah  (9  September, 
1889) — his  first  real  production  in  New  York.  William  Gillette 
began  his  career  as  playwright  in  1881 ;  while  it  was  1889  before 
Augustus  Thomas  entered  the  field.  The  gradual  rise  of  Rich 
ard  Mansfield  was  identified  with  the  names  of  Palmer  and 
Wallack ;  and  though  he  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  a  patron  of 
the  American  dramatist,  his  early  appearances  were  in  pieces 
like  Hjalmar  Boyesen's  Alpine  Roses  (Madison  Square  Theatre, 
31  January,  1884)  and  Henry  Guy  Carleton's  Victor  Durand 
(Wallack's  Theatre,  1 8  December,  1 884) .  But  these  were  merely 
pieces  of  the  theatre,  like  Cazauran's  adaptation  of  a  play  by 
Octave  Feuillet,  called  A  Parisian  Romance,  in  which  Mans 
field  first  attained  prominent  recognition  (Union  Square 
Theatre,  1 1  January,  1883).  It  was  not  until  some  while  after 
wards — in  1890,  to  be  exact — that  he  offered  Clyde  Fitch  the 
opportunity  to  collaborate  with  him  in  Beau  Brummell  (Madi 
son  Square  Theatre,  17  May,  1890),  and  this  may  be  accounted 
Fitch's  beginning,  followed  directly  afterward  by  a  one-act 
sketch,  Frederic  Lemaitre  (i  December,  1890),  written  for 
Henry  Miller. 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  these  names  in  the 
history  of  American  playwriting,  it  is  difficult  to  give  coherence 
to  the  development  of  American  dramatic  consciousness.  The 
style  in  theatre  management  was  ' '  stock, ' '  until  business  com 
bination  began  to  assert  itself.  And  such  names  as  Bartley 
Campbell  (1843-1888),  Henry  Guy  Carlton  (1856-1910),  Edgar 
Fawcett  (1847-1904)  mean  nothing  in  the  way  of  native  feeling 
for  drama,  however  much  Campbell's  My  Partner  reflected 
Western  melodrama.  Even  James  A.  Herne,  who  had  a  career 
as  actor  in  San  Francisco  which  presaged  greater  work  to  come, 
did  not  arrive  in  New  York  until  later,  though  he  had  begun  his 
playwriting  when  Hearts  of  Oak  was  given  at  Baldwin's  Theatre, 
San  Francisco,  9  September,  1879.  And  we  are  rightly  inclined 
to  regard  Herne  as  our  first  exponent  of  reality  in  the  sense 
of  getting  close  to  the  soil.  Edward  Harrigan's  (1845-1911) 


The  Commercial  Theatre  279 

plays — the  best  of  which  were  Squatter  Sovereignty  (Theatre 
Comique,  9  January,  1882),  Old  Lavender  (Theatre  Comique, 
3  September,  1877),  The  Mulligan  Guard  Ball  (Theatre  Co 
mique,  9  February,  1879) — were  varied  in  their  local  colour,  as 
were  the  farces  of  Charles  Hoyt  (1859-1900),  who  began  play- 
writing  with  A  Bunch  of  Keys  (Newark,  13  December,  1883) 
and  created  such  pieces  of  the  political  and  social  moment  as 
A  Parlor  Match,  A  Rag  Baby,  A  Texas  Steer;  or,  Money  Makes 
the  Mare  Go,  A  Trip  to  Chinatown,  A  Milk  White  Flag,  and  A 
Temperance  Town. 

By  1880  the  modern  period  of  American  drama  was  in  the 
bud:  a  journalistic  sense  had  entered  the  American  theatre, 
and  entered  to  good  purpose,  for  it  had  given  Howard  a  sense 
of  reality.  It  has  stayed  in  the  theatre  and  has  deprived  it,  in 
later  exponents,  of  a  logical  completeness  of  idea.  It  has  in 
most  cases  kept  our  drama  external. 

Stage  history  must  again  be  recalled,  because  the  affairs  of 
the  theatre  have  so  completely  governed  our  playwrights. 
Howard,  Herne,  MacKaye,  De  Mille,  Belasco,  Gillette, 
Thomas,  and  Fitch — names  which  practically  represent  the 
American  dramatist  from  1888  until  1900 — grew  up,  fought, 
and  flourished  under  the  increasing  shadow  of  the  commercial 
theatre.  After  Daniel  Frohman  left  the  Madison  Square 
Theatre  and  opened  his  Lyceum  (in  May,  1885),  and  after  his 
brother  Charles  (1860-1915)  had  opened  the  Empire  Theatre 
(in  January,  1893),  with  estimable  stock  companies,  it  became 
evident  that  two  new  elements  confronted  the  American  thea 
tregoers.  First,  the  interest  in  the  play  was  largely  centred  in 
the  personality  of  the  player.  Julia  Marlowe,  Edward  H. 
Sothern,  Otis  Skinner,  William  Faversham,  Henry  Miller, 
Margaret  Anglin,  Maude  Adams,  James  K.  Hackett,  Viola 
Allen, — all  and  many  more  came  into  prominence  through  the 
adoption  of  the  "star"  system — a  system  which  was  more 
firmly  believed  in  by  Charles  Frohman  than  by  his  brother 
Daniel.  But  both  of  them  began  thus  early  to  monopolize 
certain  English  dramatists,  tying  them  up  in  "futures,"  as 
Pinero  was  tied,  and  as,  later,  the  English  playwrights  J.  M. 
Barrie,  Jones,  Carton,  Marshall,  Davies,  and  their  generation 
were  "signed  up"  by  Charles  Frohman  on  his  yearly  trips  to 
London  for  material.  The  theatre  was  run  on  principles  more 


280  The  Drama,   1860-1918 

and  more  commercial,  though  both  the  Lyceum  and  the  Empire 
in  these  days  gave  agreeable  artistic  productions.  It  is  true 
that  Daniel  Frohman  produced  pieces  by  American  playwrights 
like  Belasco,  De  Mille,  Marguerite  Merrington  (Captain  "Letter - 
blair,  16  August,  1892),  Fitch  (An  American  Duchess,  20 
November,  1893;  The  Moth  and  the  Flame,  n  April,  1898;  The 
Girl  and  the  Judge,  4  December,  1901),  Mrs.  Frances  Hodgson 
Burnett  (The  First  Gentleman  of  Europe,  25  January,  1897), 
Madeleine  Lucette  Ryley  (The  Mysterious  Mr.  Bugle,  19  April, 
1897;  Richard  Savage,  4  February,  1901),  Grace  Livingston 
Furness  and  Abby  Sage  Richardson  (Colonial  Girl,  31  October, 
1 898 ;  A  mericans  at  Home,  1 3  March,  1 899) .  It  is  also  true  that 
Charles  Frohman,  opening  his  Empire  Theatre  with  the  Belasco- 
Fyles  military  drama,  The  Girl  I  Left  Behind  Me  (25  January, 
1893),  figured  largely  in  the  development  of  Gillette,  Fitch,  and 
Thomas.  Nevertheless,  it  was  not  by  their  faith  in  the  Ameri 
can  playwright  that  the  powerful  position  of  the  theatrical 
managers  was  won,  but  rather  through  the  astute  manner  in 
which  they  watched  the  foreign  market.  They  were  sure  of 
foreign  successes;  they  were  not  willing  to  risk  the  untried 
American.  Besides,  with  the  end  of  the  stock  company  fashion, 
travelling  companies  began  to  increase  in  favour,  and  this 
meant  the  growth  of  a  system  of  "booking"  which  put  into  the 
hands  of  a  few  the  power  of  dictating  what  amusements  the 
theatregoing  Americans,  outside  of  large  theatrical  centres, 
could  have.  The  managers  throttled  the  theatres  by  1896, 
when  the  Theatrical  Trust  was  formed,  and  though  actors 
rebelled — men  like  Mansfield,  Francis  Wilson,  Herne,  and 
Joseph  Jefferson ;  though  such  actresses  as  Mrs.  Fiske  and  Mme. 
Bernhardt  suffered  from  their  enmity  by  being  debarred  from 
places  where  the  Trust  owned  the  only  available  theatres — 
still,  the  actors  finally  succumbed  one  by  one,  the  playwrights 
listened  to  their  commercial  dictators,  managers  of  minor 
theatres  became  their  henchmen.  In  such  an  atmosphere, 
while  in  time  we  got  good  plays,  it  was  impossible  for  a  serious 
body  of  American  dramaturgic  art  to  develop.  It  was  thought 
that  if  the  monopolistic  power  of  the  Trust  could  be  broken,  all 
might  be  well  again.  And  it  was  broken:  there  soon  came  two 
combinations  instead  of  one — with  the  same  evils  of  "booking, " 
the  same  paucity  of  good  things  because  of  commercial  regula- 


David  Belasco 


tions  and  measurements.  Nothing  could  dispel  this  dull  at 
mosphere  but  a  complete  reorganization  of  the  theatre.  It  will 
later  be  seen  that  this  break-up  is  now  (1919)  in  process. 

The  only  manager  who,  early  in  the  nineties,  seems  to  have 
had  faith  in  the  native  product  was  David  Belasco,  and  his 
belief  was  founded  on  faith  in  himself.  His  early  training,  as 
secretary  to  Dion  Boucicault,  as  manager  and  stock-dramatist 
at  the  San  Francisco  Baldwin's  Theatre;  his  ability  to  work 
over  material  supplied  by  others  at  the  Madison  Square  Thea 
tre  —  all  served  him  to  excellent  account  when  he  finally  began 
for  himself  and  fought  against  the  Trust  which  did  not  care  for 
his  independence  and  grudged  him  his  success.  In  his  long  and 
useful  career  we  find  his  interest  as  a  manager  prompting  his 
ability  as  a  writer;  we  find  his  genius  as  a  trainer  of  "stars  "  like 
Mrs.  Leslie  Carter,  Blanche  Bates,  David  Warfield,  and  Frances 
Starr  regulating  his  selection  of  subjects  for  treatment  as  play 
wright.  The  advance  from  The  Heart  of  Maryland  (22  October, 
1895)  to  the  adaptation  of  Zaza  (8  January,  1899)  represented 
his  discovery  of  increasing  ability  in  the  emotionalism  of  Mrs. 
Carter  ;  and  his  successive  presentation  of  her  in  such  spectacu 
lar  dramas  as  Du  Barry  (25  December,  1901)  and  Adrea  (n 
January,  1905)  measured  his  belief  in  her  histrionic  power. 
In  the  same  way,  his  faith  in  Blanche  Bates  prompted  him  to 
write  many  scenes  in  Madame  Butterfly  (5  March,  1900),  The 
Darling  of  the  Gods  (3  December,  1902),  and  The  Girl  of  the 
Golden  West  (14  November,  1905)  for  her.  Taking  Warfield 
from  the  Weber  and  Fields  organization  (a  combination  which 
produced  about  1  897-1900,  by  their  burlesque  of  current  Ameri 
can  successes,  a  type  of  humour  truly  Aristophanean),  Belasco 
had  plays  cut  by  himself  and  Charles  Klein  to  fit  Warfield  's 
personality  —  and  this  impulse  was  back  of  The  Auctioneer 
(23  September,  1901)  and  The  Music  Master  (26  September, 
1904).  But  there  was  something  more  behind  Belasco's  ability 
to  create  stage  atmosphere  by  lighting  and  scene.  His  love 
of  the  West  suggested  The  Girl  of  the  Golden  West  and  prompt 
ed  his  acceptance  of  Richard  Walton  Tully's  The  Rose  of  the 
Rancho  (27  November,  1906)  —  a  collaboration  which  left  Tully 
with  a  love  for  the  spectacular,  apparent  in  his  own  independ 
ent  dramas,  The  Bird  of  Paradise  (Daly's  Theatre,  8  January, 
1912)  and  Omar,  the  Tent  Maker  (Lyric  Theatre,  13  January, 


282  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

1914).  In  all  of  his  productions,  as  a  manager,  Belasco  has 
held  the  guiding  hand.  Though  John  Luther  Long  gave  him 
the  central  materials  for  Madame  Butterfly,  The  Darling  of  the 
Gods,  and  Adrea,  the  Belasco  touch  brought  them  to  flower. 
This  has  been  the  invariable  result  of  his  collaboration.  The 
one  original  play  of  his  which  best  illustrates  the  mental  interest 
of  the  man  is  The  Return  of  Peter  Grimm  (2  January,  1911), 
which  deals  with  the  presence  of  the  dead.  A  related  subject 
of  interest  was  dual  personality,  which  prompted  his  accept 
ance  of  The  Case  of  Becky  (i  October,  1912)  by  Edward  Locke 
and  The  Secret  (23  December,  1913)  by  Henri  Bernstein.  The 
latter  revealed  the  expertness  of  Belasco  as  an  adapter  far 
better  than  his  work  on  Hermann  Bahr's  The  Concert  (3  October, 
1910)  or  on  The  Lily  (23  December,  1909)  by  WolfT  and  Leroux. 
Had  Belasco  not  been  a  manager,  the  effect  on  his  own  work 
might  have  been  different.  As  it  is,  he  has  sought  variety,  he 
has  followed  the  changing  times.  His  interest  in  emotion,  in  pic 
turesque  situation,  in  unusual  atmosphere,  in  modern  realism,  is 
evident  in  the  long  list  of  plays  by  himself,  and  in  other  dramas 
he  has  produced.  Sentiment  for  the  past  encouraged  him  to 
further  the  career  of  William  C.  De  Mille,  son  of  his  early  asso 
ciate,  and  while  The  Warrens  of  Virginia  (Belasco  Theatre,  3 
December,  1907)  and  The  Woman  (Republic  Theatre,  19  Septem 
ber,  1911) — both  superior  to  Strongheart — show  the  younger  De 
Mille  an  adept  at  the  game  of  the  theatre,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  Belasco  was  an  agent  in  the  success  of  these  two  dramas. 

The  entire  history  of  the  American  theatre  within  the  past 
quarter  of  a  century  has  been  the  continued  struggle  between 
the  dramatist  and  the  manager,  resulting  in  the  complete  sur 
render  of  the  former  to  the  dictates  of  the  latter.  The  native 
plays  given  us  have  been  variously  pruned  and  patched  until, 
like  fashion  patterns,  they  have  fitted  a  particular  "star,"  or 
until  the  goods  have  become  salable,  dependent  on  box-office 
demand.  When  the  play  became  a  reading  as  well  as  an  acting 
' '  thing, ' '  the  dramatist  first  sensed  that  it  was  incumbent  on 
him  to  turn  out  a  literary  product,  enriched  by  style,  and 
marked  by  conviction. 

If,  however,  one  reads  the  early  dramas  of  Augustus 
Thomas  and  Clyde  Fitch,  it  will  be  realized  how  dexterously 
the  American  playwright  profited  by  the  French  technician 


Augustus  Thomas;  Clyde  Fitch         283 

in  whom  the  commercial  manager  had  faith.  Considering  the 
demands  of  the  box-office,  it  is  surprising  that  these  dramatists 
developed  so  often  along  the  lines  of  their  own  interests.  Their 
plays  are  representative  in  part  of  the  demands  of  the  theatre 
of  the  time,  but  also  they  measure  something  more  personal. 
Thomas  at  first  wrote  local  dramas,  like  Alabama  (i  April,  1891) 
and  Arizona  (Chicago,  12  June,  1899),  which  in  content  he  never 
excelled ;  he  showed  his  brilliancy  of  observation  and  terseness 
of  dialogue  in  such  pieces  as  Mrs.  LeffingwelV  s  Boots  (n  Janu 
ary,  1905)  and  The  Other  Girl  (29  December,  1903).  Then  he 
arrived  at  his  serious  period,  where  interest  in  psychic  pheno 
mena  resulted  in  The  Witching  Hour  (18  November,  1907),  The 
Harvest  Moon  (18  October,  1909),  and  As  a  Man  Thinks  (13 
March,  1911) — the  latter  extravagant  in  its  use  of  several 
themes,  excellent  in  its  sheer  talk.  This  development  was  not 
imposed  on  Thomas  by  commercial  conditions. 

But,  like  his  contemporaries,  Thomas  was  experimental  in 
form;  he  was  not  moved  by  a  body  of  philosophy  in  his  dealing 
with  character  or  theme.  He  was  just  as  ready  to  write  a  farce 
like  The  Earl  of  Pawtucket  (5  February,  1903)  as  he  was  to  do  a 
costume  play  like  Oliver  Goldsmith  (19  March,  1900);  just  as 
willing  to  turn  a  series  of  cartoons  into  a  play,  like  The  Educa 
tion  of  Mr.  Pipp  (20  February,  1905),  as  he  was  to  dramatize 
popular  novels  of  such  different  range  as  F.  Hopkinson  Smith's 
Colonel  Carter  of  Carter sville  (22  March,  1892)  and  Richard 
Harding  Davis's  Soldiers  of  Fortune  (17  March,  1902).  Thom 
as's  observation  of  "things  about  town"  is  acute;  one  sees  that 
to  best  advantage  in  The  Other  Girl  and  The  Witching  Hour. 
Most  of  his  plays,  as  his  introductions  to  the  printed  editions 
suggest,  reveal  his  method  of  workmanship. 

He  has  not  the  distinct  literary  flavour  of  Clyde  Fitch ;  his 
stories  are  not  so  warmly  human,  his  characters  not  so  finished. 
Fitch  (1865-1909)  was  as  independent  of  the  manager  as 
Thomas,  but  he  nearly  always  constructed  his  plays  with  a 
"star"  in  mind.  He  helped  to  increase  the  popularity  of  Julia 
Marlowe  with  Barbara  Frietchie  (24  October,  1899),  Nat  Good 
win  with  Nathan  Hale  (2  January,  1899),  Mansfield  with  Beau 
Brummell  (17  May,  1890),  Maxine  Elliott  with  Her  Great  Match 
(4  September,  1905),  and  Clara  Bloodgood  with  The  Truth 
(7  January,  1907)  and  The  Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes  (25  Decem- 


284  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

ber,  1902).  That  is  the  superficial  classification  of  Fitch.  But 
there  was  a  deeper  sensitiveness  and  feeling  in  what  he  wrote. 
His  appreciation  of  small  details  was  a  constant  source  of  enter 
tainment  in  his  dramas ;  they  rushed  upon  us  with  brilliant  and 
rapid  succession.  To  see  a  Fitch  play  was  to  become  impressed 
with  his  facility  in  dialogue  and  ease  of  invention.  But  the 
fact  is,  Fitch's  pen  moved  rapidly  merely  because  he  had  pon 
dered  the  plot,  incident,  and  actual  dialogue  long  before  the 
transcribing  began.  And  when  he  did  write,  it  was  a  process  of 
setting  down  from  memory.  For  three  years  he  studied  over 
the  psychology  and  situation  of  what  he  called  his  "jealousy" 
play,  before  he  began  The  Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes. 

Fitch,  like  Thomas,  could  do  work  for  the  commercial 
manager;  and  soon  they  both  gained  positions  of  confidence 
which  allowed  them  to  lead  rather  than  be  led.  The  mere  fact 
that  their  dramas  are  readable  measures  something  of  their 
literary  value.  Thomas  has  always  shown  the  limitation  of  not 
too  clear  thinking ;  Fitch  often  obtruded  his  smartness  in  places 
where  sound  characterization  was  needed.  One  noted  this  in 
a  favourite  piece  of  his,  A  Happy  Marriage  (12  April,  1909). 
But  those  who  regarded  Fitch's  contribution  to  American 
drama  as  largely  picturesque  sentimentality,  as  in  Lovers'  Lane 
(6  February,  1901),  The  Stubbornness  of  Geraldine  (3  Novem 
ber,  1902),  and  Granny  (24  October,  1904);  those  who  depre 
ciate  him  by  saying  he  spent  his  time  flippantly  in  converting 
German  farce  to  American  taste,  as  in  The  Blue  Mouse  (30 
November,  1908),  should  recall  two  of  his  dramas  which  com 
pare  favourably  with  the  best  of  modern  psychological  pieces 
— The  Truth  and  The  Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes.  He  tried  every 
form  of  comedy  and  farce;  and  while  many  of  his  stories,  as 
plots,  were  slight  and  unworthy  of  him,  he  brought  to  the  task 
always  a  radiant  spirit  which  gave  his  dramas  a  distinctive 
tone.  He  could  write  melodrama  too;  The  Woman  in  the  Case 
(30  January,  1905)  won  recognition  on  the  Continent.  He 
could,  through  sheer  strength  of  situation  and  fearlessness  of 
attack,  create  something  of  the  tragic,  as  in  The  City  (22  Decem 
ber,  1909),  written  largely  to  refute  the  charge  that  he  was 
solely  a  dramatist  of  the  feminine.  There  was  some  of  the 
bric-a-brac  quality  about  Fitch.  He  caught  the  volatile  in 
American  life, — more  especially  in  New  York  life, — and  it  is 


James  A.  Herne  285 

this  quality  which  keeps  so  many  of  his  plays  still  alive  and 
fresh. 

At  the  time  Fitch  and  Thomas  were  gaining  headway, 
another  playwright  came  to  the  front,  having  attained  before 
hand  a  reputation  for  powerful  acting  and  excellent  stage 
management.     This  was  James  A.  Herne  (1839-1901).     His 
distinctive  gifts  as  a  writer  were  clarity  and  simplicity,  and  his 
art  of  expression  lay  in  the  illumination  he  infused  into  homely 
things  and  simple  people.     Coming  East  from  California  with 
the  traditions  of  florid  melodrama  which  influenced  Belasco 
(the  two  having  worked  together  at  the  Baldwin  Theatre), 
Herne  fell  under  the  influence  of  Darwin  and  Herbert  Spen 
cer,  in  philosophy,  and  of  Henry  George  in  economics.     He 
arrived  in  Boston  at  the  time  W.  D.  Howells,1  an  exponent  of 
realism  in  the  novel,  was  the  foremost  writer  of  the  day. 
All  these  forces  prompted  Herne  to  deal  with  the  fundamentals 
of  character  in  his  dramatic  work.     He  became  interested,  as 
Maeterlinck  would  say,  in  conditions  of  soul.    His  dialogue  in 
Margaret  Fleming  (Lynn,  Mass.,  4  July,  1880),  rang  true,  in 
stinct  with  homely  life;  his  Griffith  Davenport  (Washington, 
D.  C.,  1 6  January,  1899) — a  drama  of  the  Civil  War  based  not 
on  external  action  but  on  inward  struggle — was  filled  with  sin 
cerity;    his   Shore   Acres    (Chicago,   23   May,    1892) — which, 
because  of  the  precieuse  success  of  Margaret  Fleming,  made  con 
cessions  to  the  old-time  melodrama,  had  passages  of  dominant 
realism,  simple  conversation  warm  with  human  meaning,  which 
have  not  been  surpassed  by  an  American  playwright  thus  far. 
The  popular  notion  is  that  Herne  wrote  "by  gosh  "  drama  of  the 
type  of  The  Vermont  Wool-Dealer  and  Denman  Thompson's  Old 
Homestead  (Boston,  5  April,  1885).    But  that  is  farthest  from 
a  true  comparison,  for  Herne' s  observation  was  based  on  pro 
found  appreciation  of  character  and  human  relationship,  and 
the  Yankee-type  drama  was  dependent  on  outward  eccentricity. 
The  work  in  play-writing  of  William  Gillette  has  been  so 
closely  identified  with  his  peculiar  technique  as  an  actor  that  it 
is  difficult  to  separate  the  two.     Apart  from  his  first  collabora 
tion  with  Mrs.  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett  in  Esmeralda  (29  Octo 
ber,  1881) ;  apart  from  his  dependence  on  French  sources  in  Too 
Much  Johnson  (26  November,  1894)  and  Because  She  Loved 
1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xi. 


286  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

Him  So  (16  January,  1899),  both  of  which  showed  the  quickness 
of  his  farce  spirit,  one  should  judge  him  by  the  tenseness  of  his 
Civil  War  pieces,  Held  by  the  Enemy  (16  August,  1886)  and 
Secret  Service  (5  October,  1896) ;  and  by  the  refined  melodrama 
of  his  Sherlock  Holmes  dramatization  (6  November,  1899), 
which,  for  its  success,  was  so  dependent  on  the  nervous  quiet 
of  his  acting.  As  an  actor,  Gillette  requires  peculiar  oppor 
tunities  of  hesitant  firmness;  only  one  dramatist  outside  of 
himself  has  recognized  his  special  needs — J.  M.  Barrie  in  The 
Admirable  Crichton  (17  November,  1903).  Gillette  himself 
did  not  rightly  estimate  them  when  he  wrote  the  sentimental 
comedy  Clarice  (16  October,  1906),  nor  did  he,  either  as  a 
technician  or  as  a  psychologist,  create  aright  in  such  a  piece  as 
Electricity  (31  October,  1910).  As  a  dramatist  he  has  remained 
undisturbed  by  the  interest  in  modern  ideas;  his  social  con 
science  has  not  ruffled  the  even  amusement  tenor  of  his  plays, 
which  always  arouse  the  observer  to  moods  romantically  tense, 
and  depend  on  thoroughly  legitimate  situations  rather  than  on 
ideas. 

The  American  drama  now  began  to  show  a  greater  sensi 
tiveness  to  the  social  forces  of  the  times.  Herne's  realisni  was 
not  one  of  social  condition,  but  expressed  itself  in  human 
psychology.  Charles  Klein,  however,  tried  to  give  newspaper 
crispness  to  business  condition,  which  Bronson  Howard  had 
suggested  in  The  Henrietta.  In  fact,  the  Dean  of  American 
Drama  once  said  that  in  order  to  see  how  far  American  taste 
had  advanced  since  his  day,  one  had  only  to  contrast  the  moral 
attitude  of  the  heroine  in  Rachel  Crothers's  The  Three  of  Us 
(Madison  Square  Theatre,  17  October,  1906)  and  the  social 
fervour  of  the  heroine  in  Klein's  The  Lion  and  the  Mouse  (20 
November,  1905)  with  any  of  his  own  plays.  The  fact  is 
that  Charles  Klein  (1867-1915),  from  the  moment  he  stopped 
writing  librettos  like '  El  Capitan,  had  a  strongly  developed 
reportorial  sense  which  was  more  theatrical  than  profound. 
None  of  his  plays  could  bear  close  logical  analysis;  all  of  his 
plays  had  situations  that  were  "actor-proof"  and  sure  to  get 
across  on  the  emotional  force  of  the  moment.  But  his  social 
and  economic  knowledge  was  incomplete.  One  feels  this  in 
contrasting  his  Daughters  of  Men  (19  November,  1906)  with 
George  Bernard  Shaw's  Widowers'  Houses.  The  fact  is,  Klein 


Later  Melodrama  287 

had  no  political  vision,  though  none  of  his  contemporaries  could 
be  more  earnest  in  the  handling  of  social  materials.  The  Third 
Degree  (i  February,  1909),  The  Gamblers  (31  October,  1910), 
Maggie  Pepper  (31  August,  1911),  are  obviously  built  for  effect; 
they  have  no  organic  growth.  The  truth  is,  Klein's  solutions 
for  the  ills-of- America  condition  were  all  sentimental.  He  was 
much  nearer  his  natural  psychology  in  writing  The  Music 
Master  (26  September,  1904)  than  in  determining  the  outcome 
of  social  and  economic  problems. 

In  1900  melodrama  had  a  grip  on  the  interest  of  the  Ameri 
can  middle  class ;  it  was  the  beau  ideal  of  entertainment  for  the 
working  people.  Its  violence  accentuated  the  violences  of 
American  life,  and  Owen  Davis  and  Theodore  Kramer,  the 
Thomas  and  Fitch  of  melodrama,  flourished  on  half  a  dozen  or 
more  successes  a  year.  The  very  names  suggest  their  sentiment 
and  colour:  Tony,  the  Bootblack;  Nellie,  the  Beautiful  Cloak 
Model;  Bertha,  the  Sewing  Machine  Girl;  Convict  QQQ.  But 
soon,  through  the  educational  agency  of  the  public  libraries, 
the  melodrama  audiences  began  reading  books  more  reserved 
in  action,  more  logical  in  plot.  While  their  eye  would  accept 
scenes  of  violence,  their  mind  began  to  balk  at  repeated  in 
consistencies.  Melodrama  of  this  type  began  to  fail,  and  the 
melodramatists  were  drawn  towards  work  of  a  different  kind. 
But  the  breathless  stimulation,  excitement,  and  variety  of  this 
special  form  of  play  writing  were  taken  over  by  the  moving 
picture,  which  is  based  on  restlessness,  on  kinetic  motion. 

Until  1900  the  modern  American  drama  advanced  by  fash 
ions;  managers  followed  like  sheep  in  the  wake  of  a  popular 
success  until  the  vein  was  exhausted.  The  dramatized  novel 
went  through  its  many  phases  of  popular  taste,  beginning  with 
Anthony  Hope's  The  Prisoner  of  Zenda,  Stanley  Weyman's 
Under  the  Red  Robe,  and  Mrs.  Burnett's  The  Lady  of  Quality, 
and  passing  to  Paul  Leicester  Ford's  Janice  Meredith,  which  as 
a  novel  competed  with  S.  Weir  Mitchell's  Hugh  Wynne.1 

The  manager  thought  there  was  certainty  in  a  play  based 
on  a  book  which  had  sold  into  the  thousands.  The  book 
market  was  full  of  literary  successes  and  was  drawn  upon  for  the 
stage.  Mary  Johnston's  To  Have  and  To  Hold  and  Audrey; 
Winston  Churchill's  Richard  Can  el  and  The  Crisis;  Charles 

'  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xi. 


288  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

Major's  When  Knighthood  was  in  Flower;  George  W.  Cable's 
The  Cavalier;  John  Fox's  Trail  of  the  Lonesome  Pine;  Richard 
Harding  Davis's  Soldiers  of  Fortune — the  list  might  be  stretched 
to  interminable  length.  Out  of  this  type  of  play  writing  the 
theatre  gained  certain  striking  successes.  After  the  popularity 
of  Monsieur  Beaucaire,  Booth  Tarkington  entered  the  dramatic 
ranks  with  his  The  Man  from  Home  (in  collaboration,  Astor 
Theatre,  17  August,  1908),  Cameo  Kirby  (Hackett  Theatre, 
20  December,  1909),  Your  Humble  Servant  (Garrick  Theatre, 
3  January,  1909),  The  Country  Cousin  (Gaiety  Theatre,  3 
September,  1917),  Penrod  (Globe  Theatre,  2  September,  1918). 
Richard  Harding  Davis  came  from  novel -writing  to  an  occa 
sional  theatre  piece  like  The  Galloper  (Garden  Theatre,  22 
February,  1906)  and  The  Yankee  Consul  (Broadway  Theatre, 
22  February,  1904).  Lorimer  Stoddard,  with  his  Tess  of  the 
D' Urbervilles  (Miner's  Fifth  Avenue  Theatre,  2  March,  1897) 
and  Langdon  Mitchell  with  his  Becky  Sharp  likewise  came  into 
the  theatre  fold.  Many  American  writers  rushed  in  because  it 
was  a  lucrative  venture  when  successful;  and  coming  in  thus 
crudely  and  without  preparation,  they  learned  their  technique 
at  the  expense  of  a  theatre-going  public. 

It  is  a  nondescript  position  taken  by  the  novelist  in  his 
attitude  towards  the  theatre.  Rex  Beach  has  had  his  novels 
turned  into  plays  by  others,  and  has  written  moving-picture 
scenarios.  Alice  Hegan  Rice  met  with  as  great  success  in  the 
dramatization  of  Mrs.  Wiggs  of  the  Cabbage  Patch  (3  September, 
1904)  as  she  did  when  the  story  ran  into  its  million  circulation 
as  a  book.  Mrs.  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin  Riggs  has  tried  time 
and  time  again  to  enter  the  magic  realm,  and  did  so  with  Re 
becca  of  Sunnybrook  Farm  (Republic  Theatre,  3  October,  1910). 
But  the  literary  life  of  America  has  never,  thus  far,  considered 
the  theatre  as  anything  more  than  a  by-product  of  the  novelist's 
art.  Writers  have,  to  use  George  Ade's  phrase,  "butted  in" 
too  easily,  and  they  have  had  no  appreciable  influence  on  the 
craft. 

Then,  later  on,  the  reverse  process  began.  Though  plays 
were  being  published  and  widely  read  by  an  audience  trained 
in  the  special  ability  required — through  a  visualizing  imagina 
tion — to  get  the  most  from  the  play  form,  it  has  been  a  long 
and  arduous  road  to  persuade  American  playwrights  to  publish 


George  Ade;  George  M.  Cohan        289 

their  plays,  even  though  they  saw  what  good  results  followed 
the  publication  of  British  and  Continental  drama.  Rather 
did  they  prefer  to  see  their  plays  converted  by  some  literary 
juggler  into  a  novel,  with  the  dialogue  embedded  in  narrative 
and  explanatory  matter  furnished  by  others.  Long  before  any 
of  the  plays  of  Belasco,  Broadhurst,  Klein,  Walter,  and  others 
were  printed,  they  were  thus  "novelized"  and  read  by  a  fiction 
public.  But  the  custom  is  abating  somewhat  in  favour  of  re 
taining  the  integrity  of  the  play  form. 

The  use  of  a  college  theme  first  undertaken  by  George  Ade 
in  The  College  Widow  (20  September,  1904)  was  imitated  by 
William  De  Mille  in  Strongheart  (30  January,  1905)  and  by 
Rida  Johnson  Young  in  Brown  of  Plarvard  (26  February,  1906) ; 
and  George  Ade  carried  to  the  stage  the  newspaper  humour 
which  reflected  so  well  the  national  characteristics  celebrated 
by  Eugene  Field,  Peter  Finley  Dunne,  and  Ade  himself,  the  one 
humorist  who  builded  in  the  theatre  better  than  any  of  his 
brotherhood  before  him.  For  the  kind  of  satirical  fun  one  saw 
in  The  Sultan  of  Sulu  (Wallack's  Theatre,  29  December,  1902), 
The  County  Chairman  (Wallack's  Theatre,  24  November ,  1903), 
The  Sho-Gun  (10  October,  1904),  and  The  College  Widow  (20 
September,  1904)  had  a  national  tang  which  transcended  the 
local  pride  of  the  Indiana  School.  His  humour  bears  the  same 
relation  toward  social  things  that  Mr.  Dooley's  political  vein 
bears  toward  national  politics. x  In  his  generous  modesty,  Ade 
has  always  maintained  that  George  M.  Cohan,  the  many-handed 
wonder  of  Yankee-doodle-flag  farces  and  Over  There  music,  was 
more  typically  American  than  he.  Cohan  is  the  type  of  manager- 
playwright  who  has  his  pulse  on  the  moment ;  he  grows  rich  on 
local  allusion.  His  Little  Johnny  Jones  (7  November,  1904), 
George  Washington,  Jr.  (12  February,  1906),  Forty-five  Minutes 
from  Broadway  ( 1 4  March,  1912),  and  The  Man  Who  Owns  Broad 
way  (n  October,  1909)  have  the  tang  of  the  street  about  them. 
There  is  a  quality  to  his  music  which  has  been  brought  nearer 
the  psycho-state  of  a  nervous  crowd  by  Irving  Berlin,  with 
ms  jazz  noises  and  his  syncopated  songs.  But  as  a  producer, 
in  the  sense  that  Belasco  is  a  dramatist-producer,  Cohan 
shows  a  genius  more  serious.  His  adaptation  of  Earl  Biggers's 
story,  Seven  Keys  to  Baldpate  (22  September,  1913),  illustrated 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  ix. 


290  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

the  more  solid  variety  of  his  ability.  All  told,  he  reflects  a 
nervousness  which,  while  representative  of  the  times,  is  not  an 
enviable  attribute  in  a  nation,  though  its  flexible  humour  indi 
cates  aliveness  of  mind  and  quick  realization  of  national  foibles. 
Mr.  Dooley,  Ade,  and  Cohan  show,  by  the  success  they  have 
had  at  the  hands  of  the  public,  that  as  a  people  we  are  capable 
of  enjoying  humour,  comic  and  trenchant,  at  our  own  expense. 

The  matter  of  popularity  and  permanence  has  confused 
the  history  of  playwriting  in  America.  There  was  a  time  when 
Joaquin  Miller's  The  Danites  held  audiences  spellbound ;  when 
Campbell's  My  Partner  was  considered  as  representative  of 
America  as  Bret  Harte's  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp.  Way 
Down  East  (7  February,  1898)  and  In  Old  Kentucky  (27  April, 
1897),  by  their  extended  acceptance,  should  place  Lottie  Blair 
Parker  and  Charles  T.  Dazey  in  the  forefront  of  the  theatre. 
But  they  are  not  widely  known  today.  Nor  is  Martha  Morton 
the  significant  figure  she  bid  fair  to  be  when  she  wrote  His  Wife's 
Father  (Miner's  Fifth  Avenue  Theatre,  25  February,  1895). 
Even  the  success  of  Little  Lord  Fauntleroy  (10  September, 
1888)  did 'not  make  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett  a  dramatist, 
though  she  commanded  the  stage  in  several  other  plays  for 
many  years.  The  allurement  held  forth  by  large  profits  at 
first  attracted  the  literary  worker  and  then  the  layman  in  any 
field  who  thought  playwriting  lucrative.  Colleges  began  offer 
ing  courses  in  dramatic  technique,  and  from  the  classes  of 
Professor  George  P.  Baker  at  Harvard  and  Professor  Brander 
Matthews  at  Columbia  commendable  graduates  have  come  to 
the  theatre.  The  consequence  is  that  the  number  of  American 
writers  of  drama  has  increased  largely,  with  not  a  commen 
surate  increase  of  typically  American  plays. 

The  most  notable  examples  of  dramatic  contributions  within 
the  past  twenty  years  are  William  Vaughn  Moody's  The  Great 
Divide  (3  October,  1906),  Josephine  Preston  Peabody's  The 
Piper  (New  Theatre,  30  January,  1911),  George  C.  Hazelton 
and  J.  H.  Benrimo's  The  Yellow  Jacket  (Fulton  Theatre,  4  No 
vember,  1912),  Charles  Kenyon's  Kindling  (Daly's  Theatre,  3 
December,  1911),  and  Eugene  Walter's  The  Easiest  Way  (Be- 
lasco  Theatre,  19  January,  1909).  Moody,1  whose  untimely 
death  cut  short  the  future  of  a  man  who,  with  his  literary  sense, 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  x. 


Literary  and  Poetic  Drama  291 

might  have  grown  into  theatre  requirements  because  of  an 
innate  dramatic  touch,  in  The  Great  Divide  created  something 
which  in  substance  showed  a  deep  feeling  for  native  atmosphere 
and  a  broad  understanding  of  human  passion.  However  un 
satisfying  certain  features  of  The  Great  Divide, — for  instance, 
its  lack  of  unity  of  scene,  its  mistakes  in  motive, — yet  it  gives 
one  a  comprehension  of  stern  reality  which  makes  Hawthorne's 
The  Scarlet  Letter  so  permanent  a  contribution  to  literature.  But 
Moody's  poetic  sense,  which  was  stronger  and  greater  than  his 
sense  of  drama,  led  him  entirely  astray  in  his  The  Faith  Healer 
(Savoy  Theatre,  19  January,  1910),  with  its  mystical  atmos 
phere  where  belief  did  not  mix  with  reality,  and  conviction  did 
not  rise  above  picturesqueness.  But  in  The  Great  Divide  Moody 
caught  the  permanent  passions  of  real  people.  This  also  may 
be  said  of  Alice  Brown's  Children  of  Earth  (12  January,  1915), 
which  won  a  $10,000  prize  offered  by  Winthrop  Ames  in  the 
hope  that  competition  would  bring  forth  the  American  master 
pieces  which  popular  belief  imagined  were  hid  under  a  bushel 
by  the  ruthless  hand  of  the  managers  of  commerce.  Miss 
Brown  committed  extravagances  in  her  desire  to  reflect  the  New 
England  life  she  knows  so  well — an  atmosphere  which  relates 
her  to  the  school  of  fiction  ably  represented  by  Sarah  Orne 
Jewett,  Mary  E.  Wilkins  Freeman,  and  Mrs.  Margaret  Deland. x 
But  Children  of  Earth  failed  because  a  narrative  declaration 
of  passion  was  substituted  for  the  reality  which  would  have 
made  the  heroine's  moment  of  June  madness  grippingly  con 
vincing. 

Mrs.  Josephine  Preston  Peabody  Marks,  a  poet  with  liter 
ary  feeling,  with  an  eye  for  the  pictorial,  won  a  prize  offered 
by  the  English  actor,  Frank  Benson,  with  The  Piper  (New 
Theatre,  30  January,  1911) — a  charming  resetting  of  the  old 
Hamelin  legend  which  has  modern  implication  and  applica 
tion.  Patches  of  poetry  beautify  the  text  but  weight  the  acting 
quality.  Its  imaginative  stretch  was  refreshing  in  the  Ameri 
can  theatre,  however,  and  the  production  given  by  Winthrop 
Ames  was  distinctive.  It  possessed  youthful  spirit,  and  hints 
of  dramatic  tenseness.  But  Mrs.  Marks  has  not  yet  added  con 
vincing  proof  that  she  is  a  dramatist  above  a  poet,  though  her 
Marlowe  furnishes  a  commendable  example  of  poetic  drama. 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vi. 


292  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

The  fact  is,  American  drama  has  always  been  so  completely 
shadowing  the  newspaper  on  one  hand  or  catering  to  Broad 
way  on  the  other  that  any  example  of  imaginative  freshness 
with  fanciful  idea  would  appeal  instantly  to  a  sated  public.  It 
is  on  such  psychology  that  Eleanor  Gates 's  The  Poor  Little  Rich 
Girl  (Hudson  Theatre,  21  January,  1913)  succeeded — a  literary 
feat  in  fantastic  story-telling  which  possessed  Barriesque  quali 
ties  without  Barrie's  craftsmanship  as  a  writer  for  the  theatre. 
Is  it  fair  to  say  that  it  was  one  of  those  happy  accidents  which 
so  often  happen  in  the  theatre?  For  Miss  Gates,  in  her  next 
piece,  We  Are  Seven  (Maxine  Elliott  Theatre,  24  December, 
1913),  convinced  the  critics  that  she  was  happier  as  a  story 
teller  than  as  a  playwright.  Her  position  in  the  theatre  has 
yet  to  be  won. 

From  the  theatre  direct,  however,  there  has  come  a  play 
which  succeeded  because  of  its  universal  dramatic  and  pic 
turesque  appeal  and  which,  were  the  repertory  idea  again  to 
become  a  fashion,  should  place  it  prominently  in  a  list  of  per 
manent  American  products — George  Hazelton  and  J.  H.  Ben- 
rimo's  The  Yellow  Jacket  (4  November,  1912),  an  imaginative 
creation  of  real  worth,  far  exceeding  anything  that  Hazelton 
had  ever  done  before,  and  defying  imitation  by  Benrimo,  who 
built  The  Willow  Tree  (Cohan  and  Harris  Theatre,  6  March, 
1917)  upon  it.  It  convinces  the  most  unhopeful  critic  that  what 
the  American  theatre  needs  is  not  so  much  material  as  an  in 
tellectual,  a  spiritual  unity  about  it  which  will  encourage  such 
writers  as  Hazelton,  Austin  Strong,  whose  The  Toymaker  of 
Nilremburg  (1907)  was  simple  and  poetic,  Edward  Childs  Car 
penter,  whose  The  Cinderella  Man  (17  January,  1916)  was 
wholesome,  and  whose  The  Pipes  of  Pan  (6  November,  1917) 
impressed  one  with  its  literary  quality,  to  create  rather  than  to 
build  with  an  eye  on  what  the  manager  conceives  the  public 
wants. 

For  it  is  this  lack  of  guiding  principle,  this  aloofness  of 
dramatic  effort,  this  isolation  of  the  craft,  which  is  quite  as 
wrong  as  is  the  idea  of  a  commercial  theatre  governing  the  art 
product.  It  is  surprising,  in  view  of  these  limitations,  how  ex 
cellently  the  American  dramatist  has  progressed.  We  cannot, 
at  present,  put  by  the  side  of  the  school  of  British  playwrights 
who  grew  in  unity  against  the  Censor,  who  grew  in  intellectual 


The  Broadway  School  293 

feeling  under  the  impulse  of  Ibsen,  who  related  themselves  to 
a  literary  movement  and  to  a  social  evolution,  any  such  school 
of  our  own.  We  may  be  ashamed  to  claim  that  our  theatre 
has  produced  a  Broadway  school  of  playwrights,  of  whom 
George  Broadhurst  (with  his  Bought  and  Paid  For,  Playhouse, 
26  September,  1911)  and  Bayard  Veiller  (with  his  Within  the 
Law,  Eltinge  Theatre,  u  September,  1912)  are  the  typical 
examples.  And  the  annoying  feature  of  such  a  tradition  is  that 
here  and  there  in  the  work  done  by  these  men  there  is  some 
real  flash,  some  real  creative  contribution,  showing  the  in 
herent  ability  which  purpose  would  have  moulded  into  dis 
tinction.  Now  and  then,  out  of  such  workmanship,  the  theatre 
gets  a  whole  piece  like  Eugene  Walter's  The  Easiest  Way 
(19  January,  1909),  which  goes  to  the  bone  of  realistic  condi 
tion,  cruel,  ironic,  relating  it  to  a  morbid  type  of  emotionalism, 
of  which  Pinero's  Iris  is  an  example.  Walter,  by  a  feeling  for 
character  and  situation,  builds  better  than  his  contemporaries. 
His  Paid  in  Full  (25  February,  1908),  barring  certain  evident 
situations  on  which  uncertain  suspense  is  built,  has  as  much 
careful  reproduction  of  average  American  life  as  Miss  Baker's 
Chains  has  of  English.  And  Walter's  melodramatic  sense,  in 
The  Wolf  (Bijou  Theatre,  18  April,  1908)  and  The  Knife  (Bijou 
Theatre,  12  April,  1917),  is  better  than  Veiller's  trick  method 
of  suspense  in  such  a  piece  of  the  theatre  as  The  ijth  Chair 
(48th  Street  Theatre,  20  November,  1917). 

The  American  dramatist  has  always  taken  his  logic  second 
hand;  he  has  always  allowed  his  theatrical  sense  to  be  a  slave 
to  managerial  circumstance.  The  new  drama  of  reality  is  not 
based  on  snap  appreciation  or  judgment.  Imagine  John  Gals 
worthy  writing  Justice  after  reading  someone  else's  impression 
of  the  cell  system  of  prison  life.  Yet  Charles  Klein  wrote  The 
Lion  and  the  Mouse  after  reading  Ida  Tarbell's  History  of  the 
Standard  Oil  Trust,  and  Edward  Sheldon  wrote  his  one  political 
play,  The  Boss  (30  January,  1911),  after  reading  an  editorial  in 
Collier's  Weekly.  No  drama  can  be  built  truly  unless  one  feels 
deeply  the  materials  used.  Sheldon's  The  Nigger  (New  Thea 
tre,  4  December,  1909)  shows  every  evidence — however  effec 
tive  the  situation — of  the  author's  learning  of  the  Southern 
problem  from  books  read  at  Harvard  University.  It  has  none 
of  the  innate  sincerity  of  Moody's  The  Great  Divide  or  Alice 


294  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

Brown's  Children  of  Earth,  written  out  of  inherited  feeling  for 
spiritual  yearnings  and  ancestral  prejudices.  Sheldon,  cleverly 
alive  to  drama, — one  of  the  many  men  who  have  come  out  of 
university  courses  specially  dedicated  to  dramatic  technique, 
like  Professor  Baker's  Workshop  at  Harvard, — has  always 
been  entertaining,  with  a  dexterity  which  might  have  gone  far 
had  he  not,  later  in  his  youthful  career,  been  swamped  by 
managerial  and  actor  demands — as  when  he  dramatized  Suder- 
mann's  The  Songjj  of  Songs  (Eltinge  Theatre,  22  December, 
1914).  His  first  play,  Salvation  Nell  (17  November,  1908), 
showed  freshness  of  atmosphere ;  but  it  was  brought  to  distinc 
tion  by  Mrs.  Fiske,  and  it  had  none  of  the  ironic  intent  of  Shaw's 
Major  Barbara.  Even  in  the  creating  of  atmosphere,  Sheldon 
has  not  always  been  happy.  His  Romance  (10  February,  1913) 
has  none  of  the  real  New  York  flavour  of  Fitch's  Captain  Jinks 
of  the  Horse  Marines  (4  February,  1901). 

With  no  philosophic  body  of  ideas  moving  American  drama, 
it  is  surprising  what  an  excellent  number  of  plays  can  be 
mentioned  as  illustrative  of  certain  definite  types  of  drama. 
It  is  not  a  dead  creative  field  which  can  point  to  the  high 
comedy  of  A.  E.  Thomas's  Her  Husband's  Wife  (9  May,  1910), 
Thompson  Buchanan's  A  Woman's  Way  (22  February,  1909), 
Harry  James  Smith's  Mrs.  Bumps tead  Leigh  (Lyceum  Theatre, 
3  April,  1911),  and  Jesse  Lynch  Williams's  Why  Marry?  (Astor 
Theatre,  25  December,  1917).  Perhaps  these  examples  are 
overtopped  by  Langdon  Mitchell's  The  New  York  Idea  (Lyric 
Theatre,  19  November,  1906),  which  has  an  irony  of  universal 
import — a  tang  of  the  Restoration  drama,  without  its  blatant 
vulgarity — a  critical  sense  of  manners  at  once  timely  and  for 
ever  true.  This  ability  shown  by  Mitchell  makes  one  deplore 
the  time  spent  by  him  on  dramatizations  like  Becky  Sharp 
(12  September,  1899)  and  Pendennis  (26  October,  1916). 

We  may  point  with  just  pride  to  examples  of  drama  of  social 
condition  like  Charles  Kenyon's  Kindling  (Daly's  Theatre,  3 
December,  1911)  and  Medill  Patterson's  Rebellion  (Maxine 
Elliott's  Theatre,  3  October,  1911).  And,  even  with  its  ex 
crescences  of  bad  taste,  Louis  K.  Anspacher's  The  Unchastened 
Woman  (9  October,  1915)  possessed  marked  distinction  of 
characterization.  In  the  sphere  of  simple  human  comedy, 
Winchell  Smith's  The  Fortune  Hunter  (4  September,  1909)  and 


Tricks  and  Farces  295 

J.  Hartley  Manners's  Peg  6*  My  Heart  (Cort  Theatre,  20  De 
cember,  1912),  are  typical;  while  Elmer  Reizenstein's  On  Trial 
(31  August,  1914),  with  its  "cut  back"  scenes,  showed  the 
direct  influence  of  moving-picture  technique  on  dramatic  writ 
ing.  There  are  hosts  of  American  farces,  true  to  type,  racy 
with  American  foibles,  like  Rupert  Hughes's  Excuse  Me  (Gaiety 
Theatre,  13  February,  1911),  Roi  Cooper  Megrue's  It  Pays  to 
Advertise  (Cohan  Theatre,  8  September,  1914),  Augustin  Mc- 
Hugh's  Officer  666  (Gaiety  Theatre,  12  August,  1912),  Avery 
Hop  wood  and  Mary  Roberts  Rinehart's  Seven  Days  (Astor 
Theatre,  10  November,  1909). 

One  may  point  to  Rachel  Crothers's  The  Three  of  Us  (17 
October,  1906)  and  A  Man's  World  (8  February,  1910)  and  say 
she  is  example  of  how  a  woman,  anxious  to  show  unity  of  pur 
pose  in  her  work,  has  been  forced  later  into  catering  to  popular 
demand.  One  may  deplore  that  Margaret  Mayo's  cleverness 
of  technique  was  used  for  the  creation  of  such  an  advertising 
catch-piece  as  Twin  Beds — which  failed  even  to  win  the  soldiers 
in  cantonment  or  afield  during  the  past  war. x  One  may  applaud 
the  theatre  atmosphere  of  James  Forbes 's  The  Chorus  Lady 
(i  September,  1906),  and  yet  see  his  limitations  in  the  blind 
way  he,  like  his  contemporaries,  gropes  about  for  some  external 
novelty. 

The  unfortunate  thing  is  that  the  American  drama  has  had 

1  It  is  too  early  to  state  what  effect  the  entertainment  of  the  soldier  will  have 
on  the  future  theatre.  When  the  Government  mobilized  men  in  cantonments  it 
established  a  Liberty  Theatre  at  each  military  centre.  To  this,  entertainments 
were  sent  by  an  organized  committee  which  drew  upon  the  commercial  theatre  as 
well  as  upon  the  amateur.  The  draft  army  itself  was  so  full  of  dramatic  talent,  so 
many  writers  and  musicians  found  themselves  in  uniform,  that  in  addition  to  pro 
fessional  entertainment  sent  to  the  camp,  the  soldiers  created  an  army  drama,  rich 
in  humour  and  local  colour.  Community  interest  centred  itself  in  aiding  the 
Government,  whose  sole  desire  was,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  to  maintain  the 
morale  of  men  suddenly  drawn  by  the  draft  from  normal  life  and  occupation. 
Community  houses  were  established  in  towns  nearest  cantonments  and  embarka 
tion  points,  and  these  community  centres  may  give  impulse  to  the  community 
theatre.  Certain  it  is  that  the  Government  has  found  amusement  a  "war  neces 
sity, "  and  has  determined,  in  peace  times,  to  maintain  Government  theatres  at 
military  posts.  If  in  war  time  the  theatre  has  made  itself  necessary,  does  it  not 
follow  that  some  day  the  Government,  regarding  the  theatre  as  a  necessary  social 
institution  for  the  American  people,  will  give  it  Congressional  support  in  its  ar 
tistic  maintenance,  and  recognize  its  importance  by  having  it  represented  in  the 
Presidential  Cabinet  by  a  Secretary  of  Fine  Arts?  This  might  do  much  to  give 
direction  and  purpose  to  future  American  play  writing. 


296  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

many  brilliant  promises  which  have  finally  thinned  out  and 
never  materialized.  At  the  present  moment  we  have  every 
reason  to  believe  that  Clare  Kummer  (Good  Gracious,  Anna- 
belle,  Republic  Theatre,  31  October,  1916,  and  A  Successful 
Calamity,  Booth  Theatre,  5  February,  1917),  Robert  Housam 
(The  Gypsy  Trail,  Plymouth  Theatre,  4  December,  1917),  the 
Hat  tons,  W.  J.  Hurlbut,  and  Channing  Pollock  will  contribute 
something  to  the  future  theatre. 

The  drama  activity  is  constant,  but  uneven  and  fitful  in 
quality.  There  is  a  depression  somewhere,  as  there  always  has 
been  in  the  theatre,  and  that  depression  has  resulted,  at  times, 
in  impetuous  rebellion  against  the  manner  in  which  the  theatre 
is  run.  While  the  democratic  mass  still  supports  musical 
comedy,  which  is  as  much  our  national  art  as  goldenrod  is  our 
national  flower;  while  the  moving  picture  has  deflected  many 
pens  into  channels  of  scenario  writing, — as  it  has  deflected 
actors  from  the  legitimate  stage, — there  still  seems  to  be  a 
public  clamouring  for  a  theatre  of  art  and  ideas.  The  spirit  of 
secession,  upon  which  the  Shaw-Galsworthy-Barker  school  of 
playwrights  flourished  in  England,  seems  at  times  to  have  flared 
up  in  America.  We  have  had  our  Independent  Theatres, 
our  National  Art  Theatre  Societies,  our  New  Theatres,  our 
Leagues  for  the  support  of  the  better  drama.  But  these,  while 
having  some  permanent  effects,  have  not  as  yet  changed  the 
face  of  theatrical  conditions.  Even  the  New  Theatre  (which 
opened  6  November,  1909,  and  lasted  nearly  three  years) — an 
institution  begun  on  a  money  guarantee  rather  than  on  a  body 
of  ideas  and  a  public  that  believed  in  them — was  able  to  get 
from  the  drama  market  but  one  original  American  play  for  its 
repertory  (Sheldon's  The  Nigger),  unless  we  include  Mary 
Austin's  The  Arrow  Maker  (27  February,  1911) — a  thoughtful, 
accurate  study  of  Indian  life. 

What,  therefore,  seems  to  be  the  salvation  of  the  artist  of  the 
theatre  ?  How  will  he  gain  his  freedom  from  the  dictates  of  the 
commercial  manager?  One  way  out  was  hailed  by  Percy 
MacKaye  and  others — the  rise  of  the  civic  spirit,  which  caught 
hold  of  the  idea  begun  in  England  by  Louis  N.  Parker,  who  re 
vived  the  conception  of  the  mediaeval  guild  pageant  and  applied 
it  to  local  history.  To  the  standard  of  this  idea  there  flocked 
numberless  enthusiasts:  MacKaye,  Thomas  Wood  Stevens, 


New  Movements  297 

head  of  the  Drama  Department  of  the  Carnegie  School  of 
Technology  in  Pittsburgh,  William  C.  Langdon,  of  the  Russell 
Sage  Foundation.  It  became  a  social  matter  as  well  as  an  art 
matter.  Towns,  cities,  localities  dug  deep  into  the  public 
treasury,  and  spectacles — suggesting  a  community  of  interest 
like  the  New  Orleans  Mardi  Gras,  but  actually  based  on  a  more 
self-conscious  attempt  at  celebration — have  encouraged  a  type 
of  drama  requiring  special  writing.  But  the  pageant  is  not  the 
popular  form  of  drama  which  will  satisfy  democratic  Ameri- 
ica.  Nor  has  the  pageant  changed  the  face  of  the  American 
theatre. 

But  what  it  did  help  to  do  was  to  awaken  in  communities 
an  art  consciousness.  Individuals  began  to  take  pride  in  materi 
als  out  of  which  local  drama  might  be  constructed.  In  addition 
this  interest  in  pageantry,  which  called  on  the  co-operation  of 
the  amateur  spirit,  made  people  all  over  the  country  feel  that 
in  the  theatre  they  had  heretofore  possessed  no  participatory 
voice.  For  the  public  was  coming  more  to  understand  the 
theatre  and  the  drama,  through  the  reading  of  plays,  through 
books  on  the  drama's  history,  through  extension  lectures  on  the 
theatre,  through  increasing  numbers  of  courses  in  the  practice 
and  theory  of  the  art  of  the  theatre.  And  they  began  looking 
on  the  picture  in  their  minds  of  the  ideal  theatre,  and  then  on 
the  actual  commercial  playhouse  in  their  towns  as  run  by  the 
commercial  manager;  they  compared  the  plays  they  liked  to 
read  with  the  plays  they  were  forced  by  the  Trust's  system  of 
"booking"  to  witness  season  in  and  season  out.  And  the  im 
pression  was  not  favourable  to  the  old  regime. 

This  critical  attitude  is  behind  the  secession  which  is  going 
on  now  (1919)  in  the  theatre.  Drama  groups  all  through  the 
country  have  sprung  up,  and  whether  it  be  in  Boston,  New 
York,  Baltimore,  Cleveland,  Detroit,  Chicago,  and  so  on  to  the 
Pacific  coast,  the  secession  impulse  is  the  same :  a  little  theatre, 
managed  by  some  radical  artist,  has  sprung  up.  Apparently  there 
is  no  compromise :  the  old  theatre  must  go ;  the  new  theatre  and 
the  new  art  must  reign  instead.  These  theatres  are  independent 
of  each  other,  though  they  exchange  plays ;  they  have  no  uni 
fying  idea  which  brings  them  close  together;  they  are  working 
in  their  separate  ways,  and  upholding  their  own  philosophies, 
which  are  not  always  philosophies  in  accord  with  the  American 


298  The  Drama,  1860-1918 

spirit.  Being  secessionists,  they  fly  far  afield  in  their  interpre 
tation  of  American  life;  they  are  youthful.  But  their  presence 
has  already  pointed  a  way  to  a  more  national  unity  in  the  art 
of  the  theatre.  They  have  called  forth  scenic  artists  of  their 
own,  and  in  Robert  Jones  the  regular  manager  has  found  a 
treasure  from  the  amateur  ranks.  They  have  created  schools 
of  playwrights,  like  the  Washington  Square  Players,  the  Pro- 
vincetown  Players,  the  Wisconsin  Players.  But  if  they  ever 
expect  to  have  real  influence  on  the  theatre  as  an  institution 
they  have  yet  to  bring  themselves  out  of  amateur  execution 
into  the  dignified  ranks  of  the  professional. 

The  little  theatre,  per  se,  is  a  misnomer ;  it  has  been  carried 
too  far.  Art  has  often  been  cramped  in  a  thimble.  The 
amateur  has  built  a  small  theatre  because  the  large  theatre 
was  unwieldy  for  him.  But  the  future  salvation  of  the  theatre 
has  nothing  to  do  with  size.  The  little  theatre  has  encouraged 
the  one-act  play,  of  which  form  George  Middleton  and  Percival 
Wilde  have  been  excellent  exponents,  and  Theodore  Dreiser, 
with  his  Plays  Natural  and  Supernatural,  a  surprising  one ;  but 
though  the  one-act  play  has  great  possibility  it  is  not  to  be  the 
reforming  element  in  the  theatre.  What  really  matters  is  that 
the  public  taste  is  having  a  free  outlet  in  its  amusement.  It  is 
showing  the  manager  that  amusement  governed  by  the  cost  of 
production  is  bound  to  debar  from  the  theatre  much  that  is 
good,  much  that  the  American  dramatist  would  like  to  do 
which  is  of  an  experimental  nature,  but  for  which  heretofore 
there  has  been  no  outlet.  These  little  theatres  bring  to  mind 
the  possibilities  of  regional  repertory  and  regional  circuits ;  they 
point  to  less  extravagance  of  material  in  the  theatre,  more 
dependence,  in  scene,  plot,  and  literary  expression,  on  the 
imaginative  aliveness  of  audiences.  It  is  in  such  atmosphere, 
which  must  sooner  or  later  be  recognized  by  the  theatre  at  large, 
that  the  future  American  dramatist  will  work. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

Later  Magazines 

IN  an  earlier  volume  of  this  history I  will  be  found  a  record  of 
the  beginnings  of  periodical  literature  in  America,  and 
some  account  of  the  many  ambitious  attempts  made  by 
magazine  editors  and  publishers  before  the  middle  of  the  nine 
teenth  century.  Since  1850  individual  mistakes  and  failures 
have  been  more  numerous  than  before,  but  there  have  been  a 
few  successes,  and  magazines  as  a  class  have  attained  a  position 
of  great  importance.  In  fact,  it  is  hardly  an  overstatement  to 
say  that  the  rise  of  the  magazine  has  been  the  most  significant 
phenomenon  in  the  development  of  American  publishing.  The 
reading  of  magazines  has  come  to  be  far  more  common  than 
the  reading  of  books.  Thousands  of  persons  who  would  resent 
the  imputation  that  they  are  lacking  in  culture  read  almost  no 
books  at  all ;  and  thousands  more  read  only  those  which  they 
obtain  at  a  public  library.  No  home,  however,  in  which  there 
is  pretence  of  intellectual  interest  is  without  magazines,  which 
are  usually  read  by  all  members  of  the  family.  This  gain  in  the 
prestige  of  the  magazine  is  due  in  part  to  the  desire  of  many 
readers  to  be  strictly  up-to-date,  in  part  to  clubbing  rates  and 
special  offers  which  are  presented  with  an  assiduity  that  book 
publishers  rarely  equal,  but  chiefly  to  the  better  reason  that  the 
magazines  offer  the  writings  of  the  best  authors,  artistically 
printed  and  often  admirably  illustrated,  far  cheaper  than  such 
work  can  be  purchased  elsewhere. 

This  generosity  of  offering  on  the  part  of  the  magazines  is 
made  possible  by  an  illogically  liberal  postal  policy  and  by  the 
development  of  modern  advertising.  A  century  ago,  and  even 
much  later,  a  magazine  carried  but  a  few  pages  of  advertising, 

1  Book  II,  Chap.  xx. 

299 


300  Later  Magazines 

mostly  announcements  of  books  and  articles  of  stationery.    The 
great  development  of  advertising  did  not  begin  until  some  time 
after  the  Civil  War,  and  it  perhaps  reached  its  climax  about 
the  close  of  the  century.    At  that  time  many  magazines  printed 
more  advertising  pages  than  pages  of  text.    In  an  earlier  day 
the  magazine  had  derived  its  revenue  from  its  readers — from 
yearly  subscriptions  and  from  the  sale  of  odd  copies.    In  order 
to  meet  expenses  the  subscription  price  was  placed  high,  and 
this  price,  in  turn,  kept  the  number  of  readers  down.    More 
over,  the  fear  of  alienating  subscribers  led  the  publisher  to 
continue  on  his  mailing  list  many  persons  who  were  hopelessly 
in  arrears.    The  printer's  bill  often  consumed  the  greater  part 
of  the  total  income,  and  both  editorial  salaries  and  payments  to 
contributors  were  meagre.     The  addition  of  a  large  revenue 
from  advertising  made  it  possible  to  cut  the  subscription  price 
to  the  amount  that  would  secure  the  largest  circulation;  for 
advertising  rates  are  determined  chiefly  by  the  circulation,  and 
if  they  can  be  made  to  yield  enough  the  receipts  from  subscrip 
tions  become  an  item  of  minor  importance.    It  is  said  that  in 
some  states  of  the  market  the  blank  paper  on  which  a  successful 
magazine  was  printed  has  cost  as  much  as  the  publisher  re 
ceived  for  the  edition.    Contributors,  editorial  and  office  ex 
penses,  printer's  bills,  and  profits  were  all  paid  from  advertising. 
The  receipts  from  this  source  were  so  large  as  to  make  possible 
honorariums  to  authors  far  greater  than  had  been  usual  before, 
and  large  enough  to  tempt  into  the  pages  of  the  more  enter 
prising  magazines  almost  any  writer  whom  the  editor  might 
desire. 

Short  stories,  which  have  proved  so  important  a  part  of 
American  literature  during  the  last  fifty  years,  have  almost  in 
variably  made  their  appearance  in  magazines.  By  far  the 
greater  number  of  novels  by  writers  of  distinction  have  been 
published  as  serials  before  they  were  issued  in  book  form.  A 
considerable  amount  of  poetry,  many  essays,  and  even  his 
torical  writings  of  scholarly  importance  have  found  a  place  in 
the  better  popular  magazines. 

These  changes  have  been  accompanied  by  the  good  and  the 
questionable  effects  that  always  accompany  the  democratiza 
tion  of  culture.  It  has  been  well  that  the  patron  of  the  news 
stand  should  be  able  to  procure,  sometimes  for  so  small  a  sum 


General  Characteristics  301 

as  a  dime,  a  periodical  that  contained  work  by  the  best  living 
authors.  It  has  been  a  misfortune  that  magazines  which  called 
themselves  literary  should  be  in  the  control  of  men  who  valued 
literature  chiefly  for  its  indirect  effect  on  advertising  receipts, 
and  who  mixed  contributions  signed  by  great  names  with  others 
whose  merit  was  a  showy  and  specious  appeal  to  the  mass  of 
readers.  Nor  has  the  offer  of  high  pay  to  contributors  been  an 
unmixed  blessing.  The  great  author  who  was  aware  that  the 
editor  cared  more  for  his  name  than  for  literary  merit  has  been 
tempted  to  print  work  that  he  must  have  known  was  unworthy; 
and  the  young  man  or  woman  just  coming  into  notice  has  been 
persuaded  by  an  exploiting  publisher  to  write  too  hastily.  All 
the  phenomena  just  mentioned  can,  however,  best  be  traced 
in  connection  with  a  brief  survey  of  some  of  the  more  important 
magazines. ' 

It  will  be  impossible,  in  the  brief  space  allotted  to  this 
chapter,  to  discuss  or  even  to  name  all  the  magazines  with 
which  the  student  of  American  literature  may  find  himself 
concerned.  There  have  been  informational  magazines,  which 
made  much  of  the  timeliness  of  their  articles;  scientific  and 
professional  journals,  popular,  semi-popular,  and  technical; 
journals  of  sports;  juveniles;  and  many  others  not  easily 
classified.  The  changes  of  greatest  importance  have  been  the 
death  or  metamorphosis  of  the  old-fashioned  quarterlies  and 
other  heavy  reviews,  and  the  rise  of  two  groups  of  popular 
magazines.  One  of  these  groups  is  represented  by  the  Atlantic, 
Harper's,  Scribner's  Monthly,  afterward  the  Century,  and  Scrib- 
ber's  Magazine,  which  all  pride  themselves  on  maintaining  the 
highest  practicable  standard  of  literary  and  artistic  excellence; 
the  other  and  later  group  is  represented  by  The  Ladies'  Home 
Journal,  McClure's,  The  American  Magazine,  and  a  number 
more  which  frankly  make  an  appeal  to  the  widest  possible 
constituency  of  fairly  intelligent  readers. 

In  1850  the  chief  quarterlies  and  reviews  in  existence  were 
The  North  American  Review,  Brownsorfs  Quarterly  Review,  The 
Christian  Examiner,  The  New  Englander,  The  Democratic  Re 
view,  The  American  Whig  Review,  The  Princeton  Review,  The 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,  and  The  Southern  Quarterly  Review. 
The  decline  of  the  quarterlies  had  already  begun  in  England, 
and  of  the  American  list  named  above  but  one  lived  virtually 


3°2  Later  Magazines 

unchanged  through  the  Civil  War.  This  was  The  North  Ameri 
can  Review,  which  since  its  establishment  in  1815  had  been  the 
leader  in  its  class.  In  1850  it  was  continuing  its  steady  course 
under  the  editorship  of  Professor  Francis  Bowen.  In  the  early 
fifties  Professor  Bowen  was  succeeded  by  Dr.  Andrew  Preston 
Peabody,  who  continued  in  control  until  after  the  Civil  War 
had  begun.  During  these  years  the  Review  maintained  its 
original  character  as  a  sound,  scholarly,  if  not  a  very  virile 
journal,  modelled  as  far  as  might  be  on  the  great  English  quar 
terlies.  Its  small  circulation  was  distributed  throughout  the 
country,  and  when  political  and  sectional  animosities  became 
strong  it  declined  all  controversial  articles  that  might  alienate 
subscribers.  At  last  it  reached  the  condition  which  Lowell 
described  in  a  well-known  letter  to  Motley:  "It  wanted  three 
chief  elements  to  be  successful.  It  wasn't  thoroughly,  that  is 
thick  and  thinly,  loyal,  it  wasn't  lively,  and  it  had  no  particu 
lar  opinions  on  any  particular  subject.  It  was  an  eminently 
safe  periodical,  and  accordingly  was  in  great  danger  of  run 
ning  aground. ' '  Lowell  and  Charles  Eliot  Norton  became  joint 
editors  in  1864,  and  succeeded  in  giving  the  Review  new  force 
and  character,  though  they  naturally  rendered  it  at  the  same 
time  more  provincial.  About  1873  Henry  Adams  and  Henry 
Cabot  Lodge  assumed  the  editorship.  During  the  presidential 
campaign  of  1876  these  gentlemen  found  themselves  at  vari 
ance  with  the  publishers  regarding  matters  of  editorial  policy, 
and  withdrew.  The  Review  was  then  sold  to  Allen  Thorndike 
Rice,  who  moved  it  from  Boston  to  New  York  and  made  it  first 
a  bi-monthly,  later  a  monthly.  Since  this  time  its  character 
has  still  further  changed,  until  current  issues,  with  their  short 
semi-popular  and  timely  articles,  bear  slight  resemblance  to 
those  of  1850.  Since  no  other  American  magazine  has  lasted, 
even  in  name,  for  a  hundred  years,  the  centenary  of  the  North 
American  in  1915  attracted  much  attention. 

The  other  New  England  reviews  that  were  in  existence  in 
1850  or  that  were  established  later  had  something  of  a  theologi 
cal  cast.  Orestes  A.  Brownson  in  Brownson's  Quarterly  Review 
(founded  in  1844)  continued  to  present  his  personal  interpreta 
tion  of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith  until  1864,  when  he  began  a 
"National  Series,"  announcing  that  the  Quarterly  "ceases  to 
be  a  theological  review"  and  "is  to  be  national  and  secular, 


Reviews  303 

devoted  to  philosophy,  science,  politics,  literature,  and  the 
general  interests  of  civilization,  especially  American  civiliza 
tion. "  After  one  volume  of  this  series  the  Review  was  aban 
doned  for  eight  years.  In  1 873  the  indefatigable  editor  renewed 
it  for  the  purpose,  as  he  said,  of  showing  that  he  was  still  loyal 
to  the  church;  and  he  again  protested  this  loyalty  when  in  1875 
he  brought  the  venture  to  a  final  close.  While  Brownson  was 
erratic  in  literary  as  well  as  in  other  judgments,  he  was  an 
original  thinker  and  a  forceful  personality,  and  the  reviews  of 
secular  books  in  his  quarterly  are  of  constant  value  to  the  stu 
dent  of  American  literature  and  American  thought. 

The  New  Englander,  founded  at  Yale  College  in  1843  to 
support  evangelical  Christianity  though  not  avowedly  a  theo 
logical  journal,  passed  through  a  variety  of  changes,  and  in 
time  found  itself  devoted  chiefly  to  history  and  economics. 
In  1885  it  was  known  as  The  New  Englander  and  Yale  Review, 
and  in  1892  it  became  The  Yale  Review.  In  1896  it  relinquished 
history  to  the  newly  founded  American  Historical  Review,  and 
when  in  1911  the  American  Economic  Association  made  plans 
for  a  journal  of  its  own  the  occupation  of  the  Review  was  gone. 
It  then  passed  under  the  editorship  of  Wilbur  L.  Cross,  who  has 
continued  it  as  a  general  literary  magazine  and  review,  print 
ing  poems,  descriptive  essays,  and  timely  articles  of  moderate 
length,  as  well  as  more  serious  dissertations.  For  a  time  The 
New  Englander  and  Yale  Review  tried  the  experiment  of 
monthly  and  then  of  bi-monthly  issue,  but  for  the  great 
part  of  its  career  the  journal  has  been,  as  it  is  now,  published 
quarterly. 

The  Christian  Examiner  (dating  from  1824),  a  bi-monthly 
which  bore  something  the  same  relation  to  the  faculty  of  Har 
vard  that  The  New  Englander  did  to  that  of  Yale,  continued  to 
1869.  It  contained  a  large  number  of  articles  on  purely  liter 
ary  topics,  some  of  them  fully  the  equal  of  those  in  the  North 
American. 

In  connection  with  these  semi-theological  periodicals  of  New 
England  may  be  conveniently  mentioned  The  Princeton  Review, 
which  expressed  the  devotion  of  the  faculty  of  Princeton  College 
to  conservative  Presbyterianism,  and  was  frankly  a  religious 
journal.  It  always  contained,  however,  some  articles  of  general 
literary  interest.  During  its  career  from  1825  to  1884  it  under- 


304  Later  Magazines 

went  changes  in  name  and  in  place  and  frequency  of  publica 
tion  that  need  not  be  traced  here. 

New  York  was  the  centre  for  political  rather  than  religious 
reviews.  The  Democratic  Review,  founded  in  1838,  partook 
somewhat  of  the  nature  of  a  general  magazine.  Among  its 
contributors  were  many  of  the  most  prominent  American 
authors,  including  the  New  Englanders;  and  it  also  accepted 
contributions  from  relatively  unknown  writers,  like  Whitman 
in  his  early  period.  The  contents  included  a  little  poetry  and 
fiction,  much  on  historical  and  political  subjects,  and  some 
literary  criticism.  For  a  time  The  Democratic  Review  was  a 
periodical  of  large  relative  importance,  but  it  must  have  felt 
keenly  the  competition  of  the  popular  illustrated  Harper's 
Monthly,  and  later  of  the  Atlantic.  Between  1853  and  its  death 
in  1859  it  adopted  sundry  changes  of  name,  and  tried  experi 
ments  in  monthly,  weekly,  and  quarterly  publication.  The 
American  Whig  Review  had  a  briefer  career,  beginning  in  1845 
and  coming  to  an  end  in  1852.  It  was  a  monthly,  containing 
some  verse  and  fiction,  and  a  considerable  amount  of  general 
literary  criticism. 

Among  later  attempts  made  to  publish  a  review  in  New 
York  may  be  mentioned  The  New  York  Quarterly,  which  ran 
from  1852  to  1855,  The  National  Quarterly  Review,  1860  to 
1880,  and  The  International  Review,  a  bi-monthly,  1874  to  1883. 
All  these,  and  especially  the  two  last  mentioned,  show  dis 
tinguished  names  on  the  list  of  contributors,  and  contain 
articles  of  value.  Their  successive  deaths  were  doubtless  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  form  of  periodical  to  which  they  belonged 
had  had  its  day.  The  latest  venture,  The  Unpartizan  Review 
(until  1919  the  Unpopular  Review),  established  in  1914  by 
Henry  Holt  and  Company,  and  especially  in  charge  of  the 
senior  member  of  that  firm,  frankly  makes  an  appeal  to  a 
limited  group  of  readers,  and  gives  an  opportunity  for  the 
publication  of  clever  and  valuable  essays  that  might  not  see  the 
light  elsewhere. 

The  South,  with  its  conservative  tastes  in  literature,  has 
perhaps  offered  of  late  the  best  field  for  the  quarterly.  The 
Southern  Quarterly  Review,  published  at  Charleston  and  at 
Columbia  from  1842  to  1857,  had  distinction  of  the  old-fash 
ioned  sort,  and  contained  articles  on  science,  law,  philosophy, 


The  Magazines  of  the  Fifties  305 

and  literature,  and  many  brief  book  notices.  The  Sewanee 
Review,  another  quarterly,  established  in  1892,  still  continues. 
Though  it  is  closely  connected  with  the  University  of  the  South 
its  contributors  are  not  all  local,  and  it  has  maintained  its 
dignity  and  its  literary  tradition  well.  The  South  Atlantic 
Quarterly,  edited  at  Trinity  College,  Durham,  South  Carolina, 
began  publication  in  1902,  and  has  also  kept  to  a  uniformly  high 
standard. 

The  most  important  popular  magazines  in  existence  in  1850 
were  the  Knickerbocker  in  New  York,  Godey's  Lady's  Book  and 
Graham's  in  Philadelphia,  and  The  Southern  Literary  Messenger 
in  Richmond.  The  Knickerbocker  felt  keenly  the  competition 
of  the  newer  magazines,  but  it  continued  to  be  published 
through  the  Civil  War,  in  its  dying  struggles  adopting  the  name 
of  American  Monthly,  with  Knickerbocker  as  a  sub-title,  and  in 
a  final  volume,  January  to  June,  1865,  dropping  the  old  name 
altogether.  Though  never  distinguished,  the  Knickerbocker 
had  an  honourable  tradition,  and  offered  a  place  of  publication 
for  many  American  writers.  Godey's  Lady's  Book  was  continued 
to  1876,  though  it  lost  much  of  its  popularity  and  almost  all  its 
literary  prestige  before  its  death.  A  magazine  devoting  much 
attention  to  the  fashions  and  to  fancy  work  never  seems  the 
most  dignified  medium  of  publication,  but  in  the  height  of  its 
glory  Godey's  was  able  to  command  original  contributions  from 
authors  of  the  highest  rank.  Graham's,  which  during  the  edi 
torship  of  Poe  and  for  a  few  years  thereafter  had  been  the 
greatest  of  the  Philadelphia  magazines  and  one  of  the  most 
honourable  mediums  of  publication  for  authors  all  over  the 
country,  had  deteriorated  greatly  by  the  mid-century,  though 
it  struggled  on  until  1859.  The  Southern  Literary  Messenger 
survived  at  Richmond,  with  better  quality  than  might  have 
been  expected  during  the  war,  until  1864;  but  its  period  of 
greatest  importance  was  earlier,  and  it  has  already  been  treated 
in  another  chapter. x 

Of  the  four  leading  popular  magazines  of  first  rank  the  most 
important,  though  not  the  earliest  in  point  of  time,  was  The 
Atlantic  Monthly.  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Whittier, 
and  Holmes  had  been  writing  for  more  than  twenty  years,  and 
Lowell  for  more  than  ten,  before  New  England  maintained  a 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xx. 


VOL.  Ill — 20 


3°6  Later  Magazines 

general  literary  magazine  of  high  grade.  It  was  not  till  the 
stirring  of  political  and  sociological  movements  emphasized 
the  need  of  an  organ  in  which  distinctly  New  England  thought 
could  find  expression  that  the  Atlantic  was  founded.  The  real 
father  of  the  Atlantic  was  Francis  H.  Underwood,  who  pro 
jected  a  magazine  as  early  as  1853  when  he  was  in  the  offices 
of  John  P.  Jewett  and  Co.  of  Boston.  This  firm  had  come 
into  prominence  as  the  publishers  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  then 
at  the  height  of  its  fame,  and  a  serial  story  by  Mrs.  Stowe  was 
to  have  been  a  feature  of  the  new  periodical.  Financial  con 
siderations  prevented  the  appearance  of  the  magazine  as 
planned.  After  the  firm  of  Jewett  failed,  Underwood  became 
connected  with  Phillips,  Sampson  and  Co.,  and  at  length 
persuaded  them  to  undertake  the  venture.  According  to  a 
familiar  story  the  plan  was  really  launched  at  a  dinner  given 
by  Phillips,  the  senior  member  of  the  firm,  to  Underwood, 
Cabot,  Motley,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes,  and  Emerson. 
Later,  Lowell  was  decided  upon  as  the  first  editor.  To  Holmes 
is  given  the  credit  of  suggesting  the  name  "Atlantic  Monthly. " 
Underwood  went  to  England  in  the  interest  of  the  project,  and 
elicited  promises  of  support  from  some  English  writers.  Later 
a  number  of  manuscript  offerings  from  these  men  were  entrusted 
to  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  who  was  returning  from  Europe,  and 
were  mysteriously  lost  en  route.  New  Englanders  afterward 
felt  a  pious  thankfulness  for  this  accident,  since  it  helped  to 
make  more  certain  that  the  Atlantic  should  be  distinctly 
American. x 

The  first  issue  of  the  magazine,  that  for  November,  1857, 
contained  contributions  from  Emerson,  Whittier,  Lowell,  C.  E. 
Norton,  J.  T.  Trowbridge,  and  others.  The  most  notable 
feature  was  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table,  which  ran  as  a 
serial  in  the  first  twelve  numbers,  and  was  followed  in  succes 
sive  years  by  The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast-Table  and  The 
Professor's  Story  [Elsie  Venner].  With  the  failure  of  the  pub 
lishers  in  1859  the  Atlantic  passed  to  Ticknor  and  Fields,  and  a 
little  later  James  T.  Fields,  the  junior  member  of  this  firm, 
succeeded  Lowell  in  editorial  charge.  Fields  was  one  of  the  few 
publishers  who  have  been  regarded  by  most  of  their  authors  as 

1  See  Dr.  Edward  Waldo  Emerson's  The  Early  History  of  the  Saturday  Club, 
1918,  Chap.  n. 


;'The  Atlantic  Monthly  307 

personal  friends,  and  in  many  ways  he  made  an  ideal  editor. 
No  other  magazine  has  come  so  near  to  comprehending  the 
best  that  American  writers  had  to  offer  as  did  the  Atlantic 
during  these  early  years.  It  was  fortunate  in  having  so  many 
of  its  contributors  within  easy  reach  of  Boston,  and  the  dinners 
of  the  Atlantic  Club — which  seems  never  to  have  been  a  club — 
and  of  virtually  the  same  group  of  men  in  the  Saturday  Club 
have  often  been  celebrated  in  reminiscence  and  history.  The 
jealous  charge  that  only  New  Englanders  were  welcome  to  the 
pages  of  the  Atlantic  was  probably  never  well  founded,  though 
it  was  natural  that  New  England  standards  should  be  applied 
in  judging  contributions.  It  was  the  Atlantic  which  first  recog 
nized  the  value  of  Bret  Harte's  early  tales,  and  drew  the  author 
from  the  West ;  and  this  is  but  one  example  of  the  reaching  out 
of  the  magazine  for  what  was  best  everywhere.  A  list  of  the 
contributors  for  the  first  fifty  years  would  lack  but  few  names 
of  American  writers  of  distinction,  and  these  would  in  almost 
all  cases  be  men  who  were  committed  to  some  other  publisher. 
Yet  perhaps  after  all  the  case  is  best  put  by  Howells  when  he 
says:  "The  Atlantic  Monthly  .  .  .  was  distinctively  a  New 
England  magazine,  though  from  the  first  it  has  been  charac 
terized  by  what  was  more  national,  what  was  more  universal, 
in  the  New  England  temperament. " 

Successive  editors  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly  have  been  James 
Russell  Lowell  (1857-61),  James  T.  Fields  (1861-71),  William 
Dean  Howells  (1871-81),  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  (1881-90), 
Horace  E.  Scudder  (1890-98),  Walter  Hines  Page  (1898-99), 
Bliss  Perry  (1899-1908),  Ellery  Sedgwick  (1908-  ).  While 
the  development  of  the  illustrated  magazines  during  the  seven 
ties  deprived  the  Atlantic  of  its  conspicuous  pre-eminence  it 
long  continued  to  maintain  its  high  standard  and  its  distinctive 
character.  In  1908  it  was  sold  by  the  Houghton  Mifflin  Com 
pany,  the  direct  successors  of  Ticknor  and  Fields,  to  the  Atlantic 
Publishing  Company,  of  which  Ellery  Sedgwick  is  president,  and 
under  his  editorship  it  has  increased  its  circulation  without  be 
coming  cheapened,  though  to  conservative  readers  who  recol 
lect  former  days  it  seems  to  have  departed  sadly  from  its  old 
traditions. 

Harper's  Monthly  Magazine,  the  first  of  the  greater  illus 
trated  magazines,  was  established  in  1850  by  Harper  and 


3°8  Later  Magazines 

Brothers,  publishers,  of  New  York.  It  was  founded,  as  a 
member  of  the  firm  said,  as  a  "tender"  to  the  publishing  busi 
ness.  At  first  the  contents  were  taken  from  English  journals. 
The  prospectus,  issued  in  1850,  announced: 

The  Publishers  of  the  New  Monthly  Magazine  intend  ...  to 
place  everything  of  the  periodical  literature  of  the  day,  which  has 
permanent  value  and  commanding  interest,  in  the  hands  of  all  who 
have  the  slightest  desire  to  become  acquainted  with  it.  ...  The 
magazine  will  transfer  to  its  pages  as  rapidly  as  they  may  be  issued 
all  the  continuous  tales  of  Dickens,  Bulwer,  Croly,  Lever,  Warren, 
and  other  distinguished  contributors  to  British  Periodicals :  articles 
cf  commanding  interest  from  all  the  leading  Quarterly  Reviews  of 
both  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States:  Critical  Notices  of  the 
current  publications  of  the  day:  Speeches  and  Addresses.  ...  A 
carefully  prepared  Fashion  Plate,  and  other  pictorial  illustrations 
will  also  accompany  each  number. 

Borrowings  were  for  a  time  credited  to  their  original  sources, 
but  soon  this  credit  was  omitted.  In  a  business  way  the  venture 
was  immediately  successful,  the  circulation  being  given  as 
fifty  thousand  after  six  months,  and  one  hundred  and  thirty 
thousand  after  three  years.  Other  magazines,  especially  those 
which  published  chiefly  the  work  of  American  authors,  re 
sented  this  new  competition  and  the  attitude  of  Harper  and 
Brothers  toward  international  copyright.  The  American  Whig 
Review  for  July,  1852,  prints  a  long  Letter  to  the  Publishers  of 
Harper's  Magazine  signed  "An  American  Writer,"  which  ex 
presses  with  some  show  of  temper  sentiments  that  were  not 
infrequently  uttered.  After  asking,  ' '  Is  such  a  publication  cal 
culated  to  benefit  American  literature?  and  secondly,  is  it 
just  ? "  the  writer  continues : 

Your  publication,  gentlemen,  with  all  others  of  the  same  nature, 
is  simply  a  monstrosity ;  and  the  more  widely  it  is  diffused,  the  more 
clearly  is  its  moral  ugliness  revealed.  It  is  an  ever-present,  ever- 
living  insult  to  the  brains  of  Americans,  and  its  indignity  is  every 
day  increasing  in  intensity.  Heading  a  select  band  of  English  re- 
publications,  it  comes  into  our  literary  market  month  by  month, 
offering  a  show  of  matter  which  no  other  magazine  could  present 
were  it  fairly  paid  for,  and  effectually  shutting  out  the  attempts  of 
American  publishers  from  even  the  chances  of  a  sale.  Its  contents 
are  often  attractive,  although,  considering  the  unbounded  range  of 


"Harper's  Monthly  309 

your  pillage,  I  have  wondered  that  they  were  not  better;  it  displays 
a  large  number  of  well-printed  pages,  and  generally  boasts  a  few 
thievings  from  Punch  hardly  up  to  the  style  of  that  very  amusing 
sheet;  and  it  pleases  the  economical  tastes  of  its  readers.  As  a 
scheme  for  making  money,  I  cannot  too  highly  commend  your  en 
terprise.  It  is  a  manifest  improvement  of  the  shopkeeper's  maxim 
of  buying  in  the  cheapest  market  and  selling  in  the  dearest,  for  you 
do  not  buy  in  the  market  at  all.  You  walk  through  the  array  of 
literary  wares  which  the  English  nation  spreads  before  you,  taking 
what  you  please,  and  giving  neither  money  nor  thanks  in  return. 
You  reproduce  what  you  have  so  cheaply  obtained,  and  are  thus 
enabled  to  undersell  your  more  scrupulous  competitors.  By  this 
process  of  appropriation  and  sale,  you  prove  your  right  to  the  en 
viable  title  of  sharp  business  men,  but  you  also  show  yourselves 
utterly  destitute  of  regard  for  the  literary  talent  of  your  own  coun 
trymen,  and  for  those  national  opinions  and  sentiments  which  are 
only  partially  disseminated  by  the  newspapers,  and  which  it  is  the 
peculiar  province  of  English  literature  to  supplant  and  destroy. 

In  time  Harper's  came  more  and  more  to  take  the  work  of 
Americans,  and  it  has  long  made  a  practice  of  printing  only 
original  contributions.  If  during  its  early  career  it  sinned  by 
ignoring  and  discouraging  American  authors,  it  seemed  at  a 
later  date  almost  to  sin  in  the  opposite  direction.  At  times  it 
has  published  so  many  contributions  from  a  young  author  of 
growing  popularity  as  to  raise  the  question  whether  it  was  not 
encouraging  hasty  and  ill-considered  writing.  Among  writers 
of  tales  whom  it  exploited  in  this  way  were  Richard  Harding 
Davis,  Mary  E.  Wilkins,  and  Stephen  Crane. 

The  first  editor  of  Harper's  Monthly  was  Henry  J.  Raymond. 
Henry  M.  Alden,  his  successor,  was  editor  for  fifty  years 
(1869-1919).  Fletcher  Harper,  a  member  of  the  firm,  habitu 
ally  contracted  for  the  serials  and  for  much  other  fiction,  and 
had  a  great  share  in  determining  the  contents  of  the  maga 
zine.  Of  the  special  departments  which  are  distinctive  of 
Harper's  Magazine  the  most  important  is  "The  Editor's  Easy 
Chair."  George  William  Curtis  assumed  control  of  this  in 
1853,  and  his  essays  which  appeared  under  this  head  are  among 
the  most  delightful  of  his  works.  The  most  distinguished  of 
Curtis's  successors  in  the  "Easy  Chair"  is  its  present  occupant, 
William  Dean  Howells.  Another  department,  "The  Editor's 


310  Later  Magazines 

Study,"  has  been  conducted  at  different  times  by  William 
Dean  Howells  and  Charles  Dudley  Warner.  Among  the  men 
in  charge  of  "The  Editor's  Drawer"  have  been  Lewis  Gaylord 
Clark  and  John  Kendrick  Bangs. 

The  early  numbers  of  Harper's  Monthly  each  contained  a 
few  woodcuts,  many  of  them  portraits.  The  proprietors  soon 
began  to  pay  greater  attention  to  illustration,  and  in  1856 
started  an  engraving  department  of  their  own.  Among  well- 
known  artists  who  have  been  upon  the  staff  are  C.  S.  Rein- 
hart,  E.  A.  Abbey,  and  A.  B.  Frost,  while  many  others  were 
frequent  contributors  of  pictures.  While  Harper's  Magazine 
may  well  claim  to  be  the  pioneer  among  high-class  illustrated 
magazines  in  America,  it  was  not  spurred  to  its  greatest  exer 
tions  until  the  appearance  of  Scribner's  Monthly  in  1870.  The 
rivalry  between  these  two  magazines,  and  later  the  triangular 
rivalry  engaged  in  by  Harper's,  the  Century,  and  Scribner's 
Magazine,  has  led  to  great  improvements  in  the  art  of  engraving 
and  in  the  technique  of  printing  illustrations.  When  wood 
engraving  reached  what  was  apparently  its  highest  perfection, 
attention  was  turned  to  process  engraving,  and  later  to  methods 
of  colour  reproduction ;  and  though  there  have  been  some  freak 
ish  and  inartistic  experiments  the  pictures  in  the  better  Ameri 
can  magazines  have  been  worthy  accompaniments  of  the 
letterpress.  The  excellence  of  American  illustrating  attracted 
attention  in  Europe,  and  the  three  chief  illustrated  magazines 
have  each  maintained  a  London  edition.  That  of  Harper's 
was  begun  in  1880;  Andrew  Lang  became  editor  in  1884. 

The  second  of  the  greater  illustrated  periodicals  in  point  of 
time,  Scribner's  Monthly,  began  publication  in  1870,  after 
Harper's  Magazine  had  been  in  existence  for  twenty  years. 
The  editor  and  one  of  the  proprietors  was  Josiah  Gilbert  Hol 
land,  who  had  made  a  wide  appeal  as  author  of  commonplace 
works  in  prose  and  verse,  and  as  successful  editor  of  The  Spring 
field  Republican.  Associated  with  Dr.  Holland  in  the  owner 
ship  of  the  magazine  were  Roswell  Smith  and  Charles  Scribner, 
head  of  the  well-known  firm  of  book  publishers.  After  the 
death  of  Charles  Scribner  differences  arose  between  the  manage 
ment  and  the  publishing  firm  of  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  which 
resulted  in  the  withdrawal  of  the  Scribner  interests  and  a 
change  of  name  to  The  Century  Magazine  in  1881.  Dr.  Holland 


;'The  Century  Magazine"  3" 

was  to  have  continued  in  the  editorship,  but  before  the  appear 
ance  of  the  first  issue  of  the  Century  he  died  and  was  succeeded 
by  Richard  Watson  Gilder,  who  from  the  first  had  been  asso 
ciate  editor.  The  change  of  name  brought  no  radical  change 
in  scope  or  policy,  and  Scribner's  Monthly  and  the  Century 
constitute  virtually  an  unbroken  series  from  1870  to  the  present 
time. 

Dr.  Holland  was  a  clever  editor  who  knew  what  the  public 
wanted.  From  the  first  he  secured  well-known  contributors  of 
high  rank.  A  ' ' Publisher's  Department,"  with  "A  word  to  our 
readers,"  or  "A  talk  with  our  readers,"  though  relegated  to 
the  advertising  pages,  continued  the  methods  of  the  old-fash 
ioned  personal  journalist.  Richard  Watson  Gilder  was  a  man 
of  greater  literary  ability  and  finer  taste,  and  though  he  could 
hardly  have  gained  initial  success  for  the  venture  as  well  as 
did  Holland  it  is  to  him  that  the  high  rank  of  the  Century  is 
largely  due.  Scribner's  Monthly  at  first  printed  serials  by  Eng 
lish  writers,  but  later  made  much  of  the  fact  that  its  longer 
selections  in  fiction  were  all  of  American  origin.  Ho  wells 's  A 
Modern  Instance  was  made  a  feature  of  the  first  volume  after 
the  change  of  name.  The  Century  has  always  given  much  space 
to  illustrated  articles  on  history.  There  was  something  a  trifle 
"journalistic  "  in  a  series  of  articles  on  the  Civil  War  by  North 
ern  and  Southern  generals,  yet  even  in  these  the  editorial  con 
trol  was  such  as  to  insure  a  reasonable  standard  of  excellence. 
The  Life  of  Lincoln  by  Nicolay  and  Hay,  large  parts  of  which 
appeared  serially  in  the  Century,  was  of  higher  grade.  In 
literary  criticism  E.G.  Stedman  had,  even  in  the  days  of  Scrib 
ner's  Monthly,  contributed  articles  on  the  American  poets. 
Without  neglecting  fiction,  poetry,  and  other  general  literature 
the  magazine  has  devoted  rather  more  attention  than  has 
Harper's  to  matters  of  timely,  though  not  of  temporary, interest. 
From  the  first  Scribner's  Monthly  made  much  of  its  illustrations, 
and  both  directly  and  by  the  effect  on  its  competitors  its  advent 
had  much  to  do  with  the  improvement  of  American  engraving 
and  printing.  It  claims  credit  for  originating,  in  the  mechanical 
department,  several  practical  innovations  of  value,  such  as  the 
dry  printing  of  engravings. 

Scribner's  Magazine  (always  to  be  distinguished  from 
Scribner's  Monthly],  published  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons  and 


312  Later  Magazines 

edited  continuously  until  1914  by  Edward  L.  Burlingame,  first 
appeared  in  January,  1 887.  Like  Harper's  Magazine  it  is  closely 
associated  with  a  great  publishing  house,  but  unlike  Harper's 
in  the  early  years  it  was  never  a  mere  "tender  to  the  business." 
Though  announced  by  a  rather  conventional  prospectus  it 
began  auspiciously.  Among  the  earliest  contributors  were 
William  James,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  Sarah  Orne  Jewett, 
Thomas  Nelson  Page,  Elizabeth  Akers,  H.  C.  Bunner,  Andrew 
Lang,  Austin  Dobson,  Charles  Edwin  Markham,  Edith  Thomas, 
Percival  Lowell,  A.  S.  Hill,  and  Thomas  A.  Janvier;  and  it  has 
since  kept  up  the  high  quality  and  the  diversity  of  material  sug 
gested  by  these  names.  Like  its  chief  rivals  it  maintains  an 
English  edition. 

It  is  not  easy  to  characterize  the  distinctions  between  Har 
per's  Magazine,  the  Century,  and  Scribner's  Magazine  as  these 
have  existed  for  the  last  thirty  years.  The  long  editorships  of 
Alden,  Gilder,  and  Burlingame  tended,  fortunately,  to  produce 
stability  and  to  develop  an  individuality  of  tone  in  the  periodi 
cals  with  which  these  men  were  respectively  associated.  The 
difference  is,  however,  one  of  tone  merely,  and  is  too  subtle  to 
be  readily  analyzed  or  phrased.  As  has  been  said,  the  Century 
is  distinguished  by  special  attention  to  history  and  timely 
articles,  but  in  fiction,  verse,  and  general  essays  they  are  much 
the  same.  None  has  been  supported  by  a  clique,  party,  or 
school.  Most  of  the  greater  American  writers  of  the  last  genera 
tion  have  contributed  to  at  least  two,  many  to  all  three  of  these 
magazines.  None  of  them  has  had  a  monopoly  of  the  work  of 
any  distinctive  and  distinguished  writer  as  the  Knickerbocker 
had  a  monopoly  of  Irving  and  the  Atlantic  had  a  monopoly  of, 
for  example,  Holmes. 

Before  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  better 
magazines  had  mostly  refrained  from  illustrations,  except, 
perhaps,  occasional  full-page  inserted  plates.  It  was  for 
Harper's  Magazine  and  Scribner's  Monthly  to  show  that  pic 
tures  in  the  text  were  not  incompatible  with  literary  dignity 
and  excellence ;  and  they  did  this  by  securing  the  best  available 
literary  material,  and  developing  illustrations  that  were  not 
unworthy  to  accompany  it.  In  so  doing  they  indirectly  and 
unconsciously  helped  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  cheaper 
magazines  which  sprang  into  such  prominence  a  few  years  later. 


"Putnam's  Monthly  Magazine"         313 

Among  the  less  successful  attempts  at  a  literary  magazine 
were  three  which  bore  the  name  of  another  distinguished  New 
York  publishing  house.  Putnam's  Monthly  Magazine  first  ap 
peared  in  January,  1853,  with  C.  F.  Briggs  as  editor  and  George 
William  Curtis  and  Parke  Godwin  as  assistant  editors.  In 
introducing  itself  it  said,  with  an  evident  glance  at  Harper's, 
then  so  conspicuous  and  so  irritating  a  figure  in  the  magazine 
world : 

A  man  buys  a  Magazine  to  be  amused — to  be  instructed,  if  you 
please,  but  the  lesson  must  be  made  amusing.  He  buys  it  to  read  in 
the  cars,  in  his  leisure  hours  at  home — in  the  hotel,  at  all  chance 
moments.  It  makes  very  little  difference  to  him  whether  the  article 
date  from  Greece  or  Guinea  if  it  only  interest  him.  He  does  not 
read  upon  principle,  and  troubles  himself  little  about  copyright  and 
justice  to  authors.  If  a  man  goes  to  Timbuctoo  and  describes  his 
visit  picturesquely  and  well,  the  reader  devours  the  story,  and  is  not 
at  all  concerned  because  the  publisher  may  have  broken  the  author's 
head  or  heart,  to  obtain  the  manuscript.  A  popular  Magazine  must 
amuse,  interest,  and  instruct,  or  the  public  will  pass  by  upon  the 
other  side.  Nor  will  it  be  persuaded  to  "come  over  and  help  us" 
by  any  consideration  of  abstract  right.  It  says,  very  justly,  "if  you 
had  no  legs,  why  did  you  try  to  walk?" 

It  is  because  we  are  confident  that  neither  Greece  nor  Guinea 
can  offer  the  American  reader  a  richer  variety  of  instruction  and 
amusement  in  every  kind,  than  the  country  whose  pulses  throb  with 
his,  and  whose  every  interest  is  his  own,  that  this  magazine  presents 
itself  today. 

This  opinion,  that  for  interest  American  writings  could  hold 
their  own  with  those  that  might  be  purloined  anywhere  in 
the  world,  must  have  been  pleasing  to  American  authors. 
The  editors  gave  evidence  of  their  sincerity  by  preserving  the 
anonymity  of  articles,  letting  each  stand  on  its  merits.  The 
first  volume  contained  poems  by  Longfellow  and  Lowell,  and 
others  of  the  New  England  group  wrote  for  the  magazine. 
Curtis  contributed  his  Potiphar  Papers  and  Prue  and  /,  Lowell 
his  Fireside  Travels  and  Moosehead  Journal,  and  Thoreau  his 
Cape  Cod  Papers.  It  would  seem  that  a  journal  so  edited  and  so 
supported  ought  at  this  time  to  have  succeeded,  even  though 
in  mechanical  appearance  it  was  somewhat  heavy  and  un 
attractive.  For  reasons  not  fully  explained,  but  supposedly 


3H  Later  Magazines 

financial,  the  house  of  Putnam  sold  it  after  two  years,  and  after 
three  years  of  deterioration  under  another  management  it  was 
merged  with  Emerson's  Magazine,  which  itself  died  soon  after. 

Putnam's  Magazine,  sometimes  referred  to  as  a  revival  of 
the  older  Putnam's  Monthly  Magazine,  began  publication  in 
January,  1868.  R.  H.  Stoddard,  E.  C.  Stedman,  and  Bayard 
Taylor  were  connected  with  the  editorial  staff,  but  the  list  of 
contributors  was  hardly  as  impressive  as  that  of  the  former 
Putnam's.  According  to  the  frank  statement  of  the  publishers 
this  magazine  did  not  pay,  and  after  three  years  it  was  merged 
with  the  newly  founded  Scribner's  Monthly.  In  1906  a  third 
Putnam's  made  its  appearance,  this  time  Putnam's  Monthly 
and  The  Critic.  The  last  half  of  the  title  was  retained  from  an 
older  periodical  which  was  merged  in  the  new.  It  was  a  semi- 
popular,  illustrated,  bookish  journal  which  lasted  with  some 
changes  of  name  until  1910. 

The  Galaxy,  an  Illustrated  Magazine  of  Entertaining  Reading 
was  published  in  New  York  from  1866  to  1878.  Among  con 
tributors  to  the  first  volume  were  William  Dean  Howells, 
Henry  James,  Stedman,  Stoddard,  Bayard  Taylor,  Anthony 
Trollope,  William  Winter,  Phoebe  Gary,  and  C.  G.  Leland. 
As  might  be  inferred  from  the  subtitle,  the  Galaxy  devoted 
much  space  to  fiction,  yet  its  quality  may  be  indicated  by  the 
fact  that  when  it  died  its  subscription  list  went  to  The  Atlantic 
Monthly. 

In  Philadelphia,  Sartain's  Union  Magazine  of  Literature  and 
Art  ran  its  brief  course  from  1849  to  1852.  The  proprietor, 
John  Sartain,  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  American  mezzotint 
engravers,  and  the  artistic  excellence  of  the  plates  issued  with 
the  magazine  may  have  helped  to  arouse  interest  in  periodi 
cal  illustrations  of  high  grade;  but  the  development  of  later 
magazine  illustration  did  not  lie  in  the  direction  of  mezzotints. 
Lippincott's  Magazine  of  Literature,  Science,  and  Education, 
founded  in  1868,  was  at  first  a  fairly  solid  general  magazine, 
without  illustrations.  In  the  competition  toward  the  close  of 
the  century  it  adopted  a  popular  form,  with  many  pictures  and 
a  complete  novelette  in  each  issue,  and  boasted  in  its  prospec 
tus:  "It  offers  no  problems  to  solve,  has  no  continued  stories 
to  hinder,  and  appeals  to  you  just  when  you  want  it. " 

Many  cities  of  the  South  and  of  the  West  have  had  their 


"The  Ladies'  Home  Journal"          315 

literary  journals,  the  brief  careers  of  which  are  duly  chronicled 
in  local  histories,  but  they  can  hardly  claim  space  in  a  more 
general  survey.  The  one  exception  is  The  Overland  Monthly, 
which  began  publication  at  San  Francisco  in  1868,  with  Bret 
Harte  as  the  first  editor.  An  earlier  chapter  of  this  history1 
remarks  on  the  number  of  creditable  literary  periodicals  that 
were  developed  in  the  Ohio  Valley  while  difficulties  of  com 
munication  isolated  communities  in  which  there  were  many 
persons  of  intellectual  interests.  By  1850  the  Alleghanies  were 
no  longer  a  serious  hindrance  to  intercourse  with  Eastern  cities, 
and  the  magazines  of  Kentucky,  Ohio,  and  Illinois  had  lost  their 
chief  reason  for  existence.  Soon  after  the  discovery  of  gold  the 
Pacific  slope  offered  another  example  of  an  isolated  community 
with  a  civilization  of  its  own.  The  Overland  was  not  the  first 
attempt  at  a  literary  magazine  in  San  Francisco ;  and  though  it 
had  considerable  real  merit  it  owes  its  fame  chiefly  to  Bret 
Harte.  With  the  completion  of  the  trans-continental  railroads 
the  culture  of  the  West  was  free  to  merge  in  that  of  the  nation. 
The  Overland  ceased  publication  in  1875.  A  successor,  bearing 
the  same  name  and  established  in  1883,  is  still,  however,  one  of 
the  best  of  the  frankly  provincial  literary  periodicals. 

Among  the  magazines  of  a  more  recent  generation  is  The 
Ladies'  Home  Journal,  a  periodical  of  a  sort  which  has  always 
flourished  in  Philadelphia.  This  had  a  small  beginning  in  1883, 
and  entered  on  its  period  of  rapid  growth  with  the  accession  of 
Edward  W.  Bok  to  the  editorship  in  1889.  Bok  adopted  some 
of  the  methods  of  personal  journalism,  and  thousands  of  readers 
who  could  have  named  no  other  magazine  editor  knew  of  him, 
and  rejoiced  that  his  career  was  in  outline  that  of  the  traditional 
industrious  apprentice.  Even  more  than  its  predecessor, 
Godey's  Lady's  Book,  The  Ladies'  Home  Journal  is  devoted  to 
household  arts,  but  it  has  always  laid  emphasis  on  the  stories, 
essays,  and  poems  that  it  published.  Many  of  these  make  a 
specious  sentimental  appeal,  but  from  time  to  time  the  Journal 
has  contained  noteworthy  contributions  from  men  of  the  rank 
of  Kipling  and  Ho  wells.  Many  of  the  million  readers  which  it 
long  boasted  firmly  believed  it  to  be  a  literary  magazine,  and  its 
influence  on  popular  taste  must  have  been  considerable. 

The  most  significant  group  of  later  popular  magazines  had 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xx. 


3*6  Later  Magazines 

its  phenomenal  development  in  New  York  during  the  last  de 
cade  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  the  earlier  years  of  the 
twentieth.  The  most  conspicuous  members  of  this  group,  with 
the  dates  of  their  establishment  were:  The  Cosmopolitan  (1886, 
founded  in  Rochester  but  removed  to  New  York  in  1887), 
Munsey's  (1891),  McClure's  (1893),  Everybody's  (1899),  The 
American  (1906),  Hampton's  (1908).  All  of  these  were  profusely 
illustrated,  mostly  with  half-tone  engravings ;  all  of  them  were 
supported  chiefly  by  the  advertising  pages — the  improvement 
of  the  half-tone  process  and  the  development  of  advertising 
being  the  two  things  that  made  them  economically  possible. 
All  of  them  were  planned  as  business  enterprises,  rather  than  as 
mediums  for  the  literary  expression  of  certain  communities  or 
groups  of  authors.  All  of  them  sold  for  some  years,  as  a  result 
of  competition,  at  the  surprisingly  low  rate  of  ten  cents  a  copy 
or  one  dollar  a  year.  All  of  them  attained  large  circulations, 
estimated  in  several  instances  as  nearly  three-fourths  of  a 
million  copies  of  each  issue. 

Of  those  mentioned,  McClure's  may  be  taken  as  a  type,  and 
as  most  interesting  to  the  student  of  literature,  though  it  was 
not  the  earliest  in  the  field,  it  did  not  attain  the  greatest  circu 
lation,  and  in  recent  years  it  has  suffered  a  more  serious  decline 
than  some  of  its  rivals.  S.  S.  McClure,  the  projector  and  editor, 
had  established  a  syndicate  which  bought  the  work  of  promi 
nent  authors  and  sold  the  rights  of  publication  to  newspapers. 
He  was  thus  able  to  pay  sums  which  obtained  manuscripts  from 
the  more  distinguished  writers  of  the  day,  English  and  Ameri 
can.  Among  those  who  contributed,  often  of  their  very  best 
work,  to  the  early  volumes  of  the  magazine  were  Stevenson, 
Kipling,  Thomas  Hardy,  Andrew  Lang,  Conan  Doyle,  William 
Dean  Howells,  Joel  Chandler  Harris,  F.  Marion  Crawford, 
Edward  Everett  Hale,  George  W.  Cable,  and  others  of  similar 
rank.  It  is  not,  however,  great  names  or  even  meritorious 
articles  bought  and  inserted  at  random  which  give  character 
to  a  literary  periodical.  In  its  best  days  McClure' s  was  in  no 
sense  a  rival  of  the  Atlantic,  Harper's,  the  Century,  or  Scrib- 
ner's,  though  at  times  these  could  hardly  boast  more  impressive 
lists  of  contributors.  It  did  not  even  equal  in  popularity  some 
of  the  other  magazines  of  its  own  class.  Its  greatest  Success 
was  due,  not  to  the  work  of  the  well-known  writers  named 


"Muck-raking"  31? 

above,  but  to  articles  of  a  sensational  and  timely  nature — 
the  so-called  "literature  of  exposure."  The  formula  for  these 
articles  was  simple.  It  consisted  in  adhering  strictly  to  the 
literal  truth,  but  in  so  arranging  and  proportioning  statements 
of  fact  as  to  show  most  disadvantageously  some  person,  cor 
poration,  or  other  organization  of  which  the  public  mind  was 
predisposed  to  believe  the  worst.  Although  the  formula  was 
simple,  the  technique  attained  was  in  its  way  masterly.  The 
writers  were  mostly  persons  of  journalistic  instincts  and  prac 
tical  newspaper  training  who  on  giving  evidence  of  unusual 
aptitude  for  this  kind  of  writing  were  regularly  employed  on 
the  staff  of  the  magazine.  Ida  Tarbell,  who  had  previously 
compiled  a  life  of  Napoleon  and  a  popular  life  of  Lincoln,  pre 
pared  a  hostile  history  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company.  Ray 
Stannard  Baker  also  wrote  sensationally  on  economic  questions, 
and  attacked  other  corporations.  Lincoln  Steffens  confined 
himself  especially  to  political  corruption.  These  flourished  in 
McClure's  from  1902  or  earlier  until  1906,  when  they  associated 
themselves  with  the  newly-established  American  Magazine, 
and  McClure's  developed  a  new  staff  of  workers  according  to 
the  same  models.  In  1906  President  Roosevelt  in  a  famous 
address  expressed  his  disapproval  of  this  kind  of  writing,  and 
applied  to  its  authors  the  term  "muck-rakers,"  which  with 
the  derivative  "muck-raking"  has  since  been  accepted  as  a 
fitting  designation.  Popular  judgment  agreed  on  the  whole 
with  the  President,  and  while  this  type  of  writing  is  not  even 
now  extinct,  it  gradually  lost  its  vogue.  Though  it  may  fairly 
be  said  to  have  begun  with  McClure's  Magazine,  it  was  really 
symptomatic  of  a  tendency  of  the  time,  and  most  other  popular 
magazines  with  the  exception  of  Munsey's  indulged  in  it.  One 
of  the  most  famous  series  of  muck-raking  articles,  in  some  ways 
more  sensational  than  anything  in  McClure's,  was  Frenzied 
Finance,  by  Thomas  W.  Lawson,  published  in  Everybody's. 

Most  of  the  magazines  named  above  are  still  issued  though 
in  most  instances  with  change  of  format,  and  at  an  increased 
price;  but  they  no  longer  exert  so  great  an  influence.  It 
is  too  early  to  comment  with  certainty  on  their  significance ; 
yet  they  cannot  be  ignored  in  a  study  of  nineteenth  century 
literature,  even  if  they  reached  their  culmination  just  after 
1900.  Indeed,  it  may  appear  that  many  of  the  literary  tenv 


3i8  Later  Magazines 

dencies  that  developed  during  the  nineteenth  century  were 
concentrated  and  delivered  to  the  twentieth  century  through 
this  peculiar  development  of  periodical  literature.  If  irresisti 
ble  forces  are  making  toward  the  democratization  of  litera 
ture,  then  the  rise  of  these  magazines  marks  an  important 
step  in  the  movement.  They  brought  writers  who  were  un 
questionably  the  best  of  their  time  to  a  great  number  of  readers 
who  might  not  otherwise  have  known  them.  On  the  other  hand, 
they  brought  into  magazine  writing  some  of  the  qualities  that 
had  been  developed  by  the  modern  journalist.  Bad  as  the 
muck-raking  articles  were  in  content  and  temper,  they  showed 
forth  methods  of  popular  exposition  that  later  essayists,  even 
the  most  conservative,  are  now  adopting.  Nor  have  the  older 
magazines  escaped  the  influence  of  their  younger  rivals.  The 
Atlantic  Monthly,  long  the  exponent  of  the  most  reserved  and 
bookish  tradition,  has  for  its  present  editor  a  man  who  received 
his  training  with  Frank  Leslie's  Monthly,  The  American  Maga 
zine,  and  McClure's;  and  while  old-fashioned  readers  may  now 
and  then  regret  the  resulting  change  of  tone,  it  would  be  rash 
to  say  that  the  change  was  all  for  the  worse,  or  to  feel  that  the 
outlook  for  periodical  literature  today  was  not  as  bright  as  it 
has  been  at  any  period  of  our  national  life. 


CHAPTER  XX 

Newspapers  Since  1860 

WHEN  the  sudden  beginning  of  the  Civil  War  changed 
the  whole  current  of  national  life,  the  newspapers  of 
the  country  were  in  many  respects  prepared  to  report 
and  interpret  the  great  event.  Had  the  war  been  clearly  fore 
seen  for  a  decade,  more  adequate  preparation  could  hardly  have 
been  made  to. adjust  the  service  to  the  momentous  changes 
which  came  so  swiftly.  Ingenuity  and  aggressiveness  in  the 
gathering  of  news,  the  rise  and  growth  of  which  has  been  sketched 
in  another  chapter, x  had  quickened  the  whole  profession.  The 
telegraph,  which  was  little  more  than  an  experiment  when  the 
Mexican  War  came  on,  had  by  1860  been  extended  to  all  parts 
of  the  country  directly  affected  by  the  war.  The  revolution 
thereby  created  in  methods  of  gathering,  transmitting,  and 
vending  news  had  been  accomplished  in  the  interval  of  twelve 
or  fifteen  years,  and  journalism  was  becoming  accustomed  to 
the  new  order.  The  growing  use  and  expensiveness  of  the  tele 
graph  had  already  led  to  the  formation  of  press  associations. 
And  at  almost  the  same  time  the  invention  of  the  modern 
papier  mache  process  of  stereotyping,  together  with  improve 
ments  in  printing  presses,  removed  mechanical  obstructions 
which  until  1861  had  curbed  the  production  of  newspapers. 
With  all  these  general  developments  there  had  been,  until  a 
few  weeks  before  hostilities  began,  little  detailed  preparation  to 
meet  the  actual  crisis ;  the  press  was  not  on  a  war  footing ;  there 
were  no  experienced  war  correspondents. 

Newspapers  had  spread  over  the  whole  country,  flowing  into 
the  Central  valleys  and  plains  and  down  the  Western  slopes 
1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xxi. 

319 


320  Newspapers  Since  1860 

along  with  the  most  enterprising  of  the  early  settlers.  When 
Lincoln  read  his  first  inaugural,  only  four  states  or  territories  in 
the  Union  were  without  newspapers  to  report  it;  twelve  years 
later,  not  one  was  without  a  newspaper  to  chronicle  the  defeat 
and  death  of  the  great  journalist  who  sought  the  Presidency. 
News  style  had  taken  essentially  the  form  still  to  be  found  in 
the  more  conservative  papers  of  the  country;  headlines  were  still 
inconspicuous,  never  more  than  one  column  wide,  and  seldom 
revealing  the  news  they  topped.  The  custom  among  many  pa 
pers  of  sending  correspondents  throughout  the  South  and  the 
Far  West  to  report  conditions  and  events  was  now  to  prove  use 
ful  preparation  for  the  period  when  the  South  became  the  great 
est  source  of  news  in  the  world.  Foreign  correspondence  after 
its  rapid  spread  in  the  forties  had  been  somewhat  more  fully 
organized,  although  it  was  no  more  ably  conducted.  The  pres 
sure  of  domestic  events  led  to  some  neglect  of  the  foreign  field, 
just  before  and  during  the  war,  and  it  was  not  until  the  short 
Franco-Prussian  conflict  that  European  affairs  again  received 
much  attention  from  the  American  press. 

Never  before  was  a  war  so  well  reported  as  was  the  American 
Civil  War — so  fully,  promptly,  and  accurately.  Although  it  is 
generally  believed  that  Englishmen  in  the  Crimea  virtually  cre 
ated  modern  war  correspondence,  its  real  beginnings  had  been 
made  years  before  by  American  reporters  in  the  war  with  Mex 
ico,  and  the  whole  system  of  reporting  the  progress  of  war  and 
presenting  it  fully  and  promptly  to  the  public  was  developed 
very  nearly  to  perfection  by  American  journalistic  enterprise 
in  the  Civil  War.  The  problems  confronting  the  newspapers 
when  the  war  began  were  the  greatest  ever  faced  by  journalists. 
The  size  of  country  to  be  covered,  the  number  of  armies  and  of 
widely  separated  actions,  and  the  still  primitive  means  of  com 
munication  tested  the  valour  and  ingenuity  that  sought  to  over 
come  them.  When  the  first  gun  was  fired  no  paper  had  a  system 
for  reporting  from  the  front,  though  in  the  weeks  before  that 
event  several  of  them  had  begun  to  send  men  to  important 
places  by  way  of  precaution.  Before  Sumter  fell,  the  New  York 
Herald  had  received  enough  papers  from  its  correspondents  to 
furnish  a  roster  of  the  Southern  army  which  convinced  the 
leaders  that  there  was  a  spy  in  the  Confederate  war  office,  and 
in  a  short  time  after  Sumter  a  net  of  reporters  was  spread  all 


The  Civi'fWar  321 

over  the  South,  placed  at  every  important  point,  and  sent  with 
every  army.  The  Herald  quickly  built  a  great  news-gathering 
organization,  with  the  Tribune  and  the  Times  following  as  close 
competitors,  while  every  important  paper  in  the  country  sent  at 
least  one  correspondent  to  Washington  or  to  the  front.  These 
men,  nearly  all  inexperienced  in  their  special  duties,  but  called 
upon  to  report  a  more  rapid  and  long-continued  series  of  mili 
tary  movements  than  had  ever  before  been  recorded,  not  only 
accomplished  a  remarkable  series  of  individual  achievements 
but  set  a  new  standard  in  that  type  of  journalism. 

The  task  of  organizing  such  corps  of  correspondents  as  were 
sent  out  by  the  Herald,  Tribune,  and  Times,  of  New  York,  of 
discharging  the  normal  functions  of  the  papers,  and  of  supplying 
the  unprecedented  demand  for  newspapers,  extraordinary  as  it 
was,  did  not  lead  to  many  important  advances  in  journalistic 
practice.  The  changes  due  to  the  war  were  mainly  economic. 
In  the  South,  which  had  depended  almost  entirely  on  the  North 
for  its  supplies,  the  lack  of  paper  was  soon  felt  and  before  peace 
came  had  caused  the  suspension  of  many  papers.  Many  others 
were  suppressed  by  Northern  military  authorities.  The  press 
of  the  South,  indeed,  lost  much  and  gained  little  or  nothing  by 
the  war.  A  rigid  government  censorship  and  news  bureau  de 
prived  those  papers  even  of  such  opportunities  as  other  cir 
cumstances  might  have  permitted.  Less  enterprise  was  manifest 
in  news-gathering  than  in  printing  official  communications  and 
editorials.  But  it  may  be  said  that,  although  before  the  war 
began  there  was  much  difference  of  Southern  editorial  opinion 
regarding  the  advisability  of  secession,  after  the  decision  was 
made,  a  united  press  supported  the  Confederate  authorities. 

Censorship  in  the  North  was  unorganized,  spasmodic,  some 
times  oppressive,  and  generally  ineffectual.  The  Post  Office 
Department  then,  as  more  recently,  denied  the  privilege  of  the 
mails  to  papers  adjudged  to  be  treasonable,  even  to  some  which 
criticized  the  use  of  force  against  the  seceding  states.  Corre 
spondents  were  in  some  cases  welcomed  and  trusted  by  the  mili 
tary  authorities ;  in  others  they  were  excluded.  Early  in  the  war 
a  censor  was  placed  in  the  telegraph  office  at  Washington ;  but 
official  oversuppression  finally  brought  about  a  reaction  which  led 
to  a  more  liberal  policy.  The  natural  desire  of  the  authorities 
to  prevent  the  circulation  of  information  that  might  be  useful  to 


VOL.  Ill — 21 


322  Newspapers  Since  1860 

the  enemy,  and  the  nervousness  caused  by  the  many  Copper 
head  papers  opposed  to  the  war,  friendly  to  the  South,  or  un 
friendly  to  the  government,  led  to  much  official  criticism  of 
mere  news  enterprise  and  to  acts  of  suppression  by  the  author 
ities.  For  instance  General  McClellan  requested  the  War 
Department  to  suppress  the  New  York  Times  for  printing  a  map 
of  the  works  and  a  statement  of  forces  beyond  the  Potomac,  no 
part  of  which  had,  in  fact,  come  from  other  than  public  sources. 
The  New  York  World  and  Journal  of  Commerce  were  suspended 
for  several  days  because  they  unsuspectingly  published  a  bogus 
presidential  proclamation.  The  Chicago  Times,  a  leading  Cop 
perhead  paper,  was  forced  to  suspend  publication  for  a  short 
time  because  of  disloyal  utterances.  The  strong  feeling  engen 
dered  by  the  conflict  led  to  many  acts  of  mob  violence  against 
newspapers,  most  of  them  in  smaller  towns,  and  in  the  aggregate, 
scores  of  them  were  as  a  result  suspended  or  destroyed,  though 
relatively  fewer  fatalities  resulted  than  from  the  earlier  acts  of 
violence  against  the  abolitionist  press.  The  most  important 
mob  attack  on  a  great  city  paper  was  directed  against  the  New 
York  Tribune  during  the  draft  riots  on  13  July,  1863. 

It  was  not  mere  editorial  arrogance  or  vanity  that  James 
Gordon  Bennett  displayed  when  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  he 
assured  President  Lincoln  of  the  support  of  the  New  York 
Herald.  Lincoln's  subsequent  offer  of  the  French  mission  to  the 
erratic  journalist  vouches  for  that.  For  editorial  influence  was 
then  at  its  greatest,  and  the  power  wielded  by  the  leaders  in  the 
great  era  of  personal  journalism — such  men  as  Greeley,  Ben 
nett,  Bowles,  Raymond,  Bryant,  Schouler — made  government 
by  newspapers  something  more  than  a  phrase.  The  country 
was  accustomed  to  a  journalistic  leadership  in  which  it  had 
faith.  Not  a  few  editors  felt  competent  to  instruct  the  govern 
ment  in  both  political  and  military  affairs,  and  some  undertook 
to  do  so,  notably  Horace  Greeley,  in  the  New  York  Tribune,  to 
the  clamour  of  which  paper  is  attributed  the  ill-advised  aggression 
which  led  to  the  defeat  at  Bull  Run.  Of  all  the  editorials  writ 
ten  during  the  war,  Greeley's  ' '  The  Prayer  of  Twenty  Millions, ' ' 
printed  in  the  Tribune  on  20  August,  1862,  is  probably  the  most 
significant,  not  only  because  it  indicates  the  tone  assumed  in 
many  papers,  but  especially  because  it  drew  from  President 
Lincoln  a  reply  which  defined  more  clearly  than  ever  before  his 


The  Civil  War  323 

position  on  the  question  of  slavery  and  made  unmistakable  the 
relative  positions  of  President  and  editor.  There  is  a  resem 
blance  between  this  encounter  and  an  earlier  and  less  public  one 
between  Lincoln  and  Seward,  and  the  two  events  are  not  incom 
parable  in  importance.  After  that  exchange  of  ideas  the  news 
papers  of  the  North  supported  the  President  more  completely 
than  before.  As  the  war  progressed,  however,  the  editorial 
gradually  came  to  occupy  a  less  important  place  than  news,  and 
by  the  close  of  the  conflict  the  authority  and  influence  of  the 
great  personalities  of  journalism  had  appreciably  declined. 

The  war  produced  one  immediate  economic  change  which 
proved  the  beginning  of  a  revolution  still  going  on.  The  great 
demand  for  news  brought  a  tremendous  increase  in  circulation 
to  those  papers  able  to  furnish  the  fullest  accounts  of  the  war, 
and  contributed  to  the  prosperity  of  the  larger  papers  at  the 
expense  of  the  smaller  ones.  Although  great  numbers  of  papers 
were  set  up  to  meet  the  demand  for  war  news,  still  more  suffered 
extinction,  with  the  result  that  in  many  states  there  were  fewer 
in  1865  than  in  1861.  In  Illinois,  for  instance,  144  papers  were 
begun,  and  155  were  discontinued  in  the  four  years.  Part  of 
the  decrease  was  due  to  lack  of  labour,  a  condition  which  led  to 
the  invention  of  the  "patent  insides."  Contrived  as  a  means 
of  economy,  this  device  led  to  important  developments  in 
country  journalism  in  later  decades  by  reducing  the  cost  of 
printing. 

Reconstruction  was  accompanied  by  still  further  mechan 
ical  improvements  in  stereotyping  and  in  presses  which  made 
possible  great  growth  in  the  industry.  The  extension  of  co-oper 
ative  news-gathering  was  rapid  after  1865,  when  the  Western 
Associated  Press  was  formed,  largely  through  the  initiative  of 
Joseph  Medill  of  the  Chicago  Tribune.  This  association,  co-or 
dinated  with  that  of  New  York,  greatly  broadened  the  news 
resources  of  both  Western  and  Eastern  papers.  The  rapid 
growth  to  the  West  and  in  the  great  Central  valleys  continued, 
accelerated  by  a  decrease  in  the  price  of  paper  towards  the  end 
of  the  period,  as  well  as  by  the  increase  in  population.  In  the 
South,  where  the  business  had  suffered  most,  the  dozen  years 
following  the  war  were  a  time  of  restoration,  as  well  as  of  exten 
sion.  Many  of  the  leading  papers  had  survived — in  Louisville, 
Memphis,  Nashville,  Richmond,  Atlanta,  New  Orleans — and 


324  Newspapers  Since  1860 

these  laboured  energetically,  in  the  face  of  appalling  difficulties, 
political  as  well  as  material,  to  hasten  the  revival  of  the  country. 
Many  suspended  papers  were  restored,  and  many  new  ones  of 
stability  were  begun.  There  were  other  new  ones,  also,  ephem 
eral  but  troublesome,  set  up  to  support  the  carpet-baggers 
and  others  who  delayed  the  healing  of  old  sectional  wounds. 
Twenty  years  passed  before  the  newspapers  of  the  South  re 
covered  from  the  injury  wrought  by  the  war. 

The  war  had  accustomed  publishers  to  lavish  expenditure 
of  money  in  gathering  news  and  had  created  many  new  readers 
who  could  not  be  retained  by  editorial  discussion  or  heavy  style. 
They  had  been  attracted  by  lists  of  killed  and  wounded,  narra 
tives  of  vivid  fact,  rather  than  by  discussion ;  it  was  necessary 
to  find  a  substitute  for  the  absorbing  accounts  of  war.  One 
result  of  this  effort  to  avert  a  return  to  the  earlier  heaviness, 
perhaps,  was  the  development  of  a  new  journalistic  technique, 
the  cultivation  of  an  artistic  narrative  style.  It  was  Charles  A. 
Dana,  through  the  New  York  Sun,  who  set  the  new  pattern 
that  was  followed  by  the  American  press  generally  for  two 
decades.  His  idea  was  merely  to  apply  the  art  of  literary  crafts 
manship  to  the  choosing  and  the  telling  of  the  varied  stories  of 
the  day's  events.  Human  interest,  not  importance  of  meaning 
or  consequences,  governed  the  choice  of  topics.  This  new  style 
possessed  simplicity  and  clearness;  it  abounded  in  details  chosen 
for  artistic  effectiveness  rather  than  for  intrinsic  news  value.  It 
added  grace,  without  losing  force;  the  deft  touch  replaced  the 
heavy  or  awkward  stroke.  Dana  had  begun  his  journalistic 
career  on  the  New  York  Tribune  under  Greeley,  where  he  was 
managing  editor  and  a  most  important  figure  until  1862.  He 
became  editor  of  the  Sun  early  in  1868.  What  he  meant  to  do, 
and  did,  Dana  announced  thus:  "The  Sun  .  .  .  will  study 
condensation,  clearness,  point,  and  will  endeavour  to  present  its 
daily  photograph  of  the  whole  world's  doings  in  the  most  lumi 
nous  and  lively  manner." 

In  certain  other  respects,  also,  Dana  and  the  Sun  were 
characteristic  of  the  new  era.  The  great  majority  of  papers 
were  still  servile  party  organs;  political  discussion  was  as  bitter 
as  ever,  and  nowhere  more  so  than  in  the  Sun;  vigorously 
expressed  personalities  enlivened  the  editorial  columns.  The 
rancour  displayed  in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1872  was  un- 


Weekly  Papers  325 

paralleled.  But  in  the  midst  of  bitter  party  controversy,  inde 
pendent  journalism  was  growing  apace;  the  editor  and  the 
politician  were  becoming  more  and  more  disentangled.  The 
politician  kept  political  power  and  the  editor  looked  elsewhere 
for  his  influence — in  a  variety  of  interests,  social,  literary,  and 
commercial.  The  influential  editors  throughout  the  country 
who  were  taking  the  place  of  the  giants  of  the  preceding  era 
were  following  the  precept  of  Bowles  in  learning  to  control 
what  they  seemed  only  to  transcribe  and  narrate.  They  no 
longer  preached  or  laid  down  the  law.  It  was  the  publishing 
and  depicting  of  facts,  not  the  invective  of  editorial  attack, 
that  achieved  results  in  the  exposure  of  the  Tweed  ring  by  the 
New  York  Times  and  Harper's  Weekly  in  1871  and  of  the  "Whis 
key  Ring  "  by  the  St.  Louis  Globe-Democrat.  Exploits  like  these 
had  never  been  attempted  before;  though  they  have  never 
since  been  equalled  in  daring  or  in  results  obtained,  they  were 
progenitors  of  the  sensational  press  characteristic  of  a  later 
period. 

Independent  political  thought  and  discussion  were  greatly 
strengthened  by  the  growth  of  weekly  papers  which  were  estab 
lished  or  which  became  prominent  just  after  the  war.  The 
Independent,  founded  as  a  progressive  and  liberal  religious  jour 
nal  in  1848,  had  been  a  powerful  anti-slavery  force,  a  leading 
journal  of  political,  literary,  and  social,  as  well  as  of  religious 
discussion.  When  Henry  Ward  Beecher  took  the  editorship 
in  1 86 1  he  said  he  "would  assume  the  liberty  of  meddling  with 
every  question  which  agitated  the  civil  or  Christian  commu 
nity,"  and  in  doing  so  he  wrote,  in  this  weekly  newspaper,  and 
in  the  Christian  Union,  now  the  Outlook,  of  which  he  became 
editor  in  1870,  some  of  the  strongest  editorials  in  the  American 
press.  "It  is  the  aim  of  the  Christian  Union  to  gospelize  all 
the  industrial  functions  of  life,"  Beecher  wrote.  These  two  are 
but  the  most  conspicuous  of  a  large  class  of  religious  journals, 
more  nearly  newspapers  than  magazines,  which  had  much 
popularity  and  influence  as  organs  of  general  discussion  through 
the  years  of  Reconstruction. 

When  the  New  York  Times  attacked  the  Tweed  ring,  its 
most  effective  ally  was  Harper's  Weekly,  an  illustrated  paper 
established  in  1857,  which  partly  through  its  remarkable  use  of 
illustrations  and  its  sound  editorial  policy  under  George  William 


326  Newspapers  Since  1860 

Curtis1  had  become  popular  and  influential.  The  illustrations 
and  cartoons  of  Thomas  Nast  in  this  paper  were  one  of  the  strik 
ing  features  of  the  journalism  of  the  war,  and  in  the  years  fol 
lowing  became  a  national  force — the  artist  was  declared  by 
General  Grant  to  be  the  foremost  figure  in  civil  life  developed 
by  the  war.  His  power  as  a  cartoonist  was  still  growing  when 
in  1870  the  Times  began  its  great  exposure,  and  Nast,  who  in 
Harper's  Weekly  had  already  begun  the  fight,  collaborated  with 
a  series  of  cartoons  which  still  rank  with  the  greatest,  both  in 
conception  and  in  effect,  ever  published.  At  the  same  time 
Curtis,  who  became  political  editor  in  1863  and  editor  three 
years  later,  made  the  paper  a  telling  force  in  independent  jour 
nalism,  notably  during  the  following  decade  in  advocating 
civil  service  reform  and  similar  movements  for  the  cleansing 
of  politics. 

A  more  potent  force  in  the  movement  towards  independence 
was  another  weekly,  the  Nation,  established  under  the  editor 
ship  of  Edwin  Lawrence  Godkin  in  1865,  which  in  the  course 
of  a  few  years  set  a  new  standard  of  free  and  intelligent  criticism 
of  public  affairs.  Godkin  had  begun  serious  work  in  journal 
ism  when  in  1853,  at  the  age  of  twenty-two,  he  had  gone  to  the 
Crimea  for  the  London  Daily  News.  He  had  come  to  the  United 
States  in  1856,  had  become  a  keen  student  of  American  life, 
politics,  and  journalism,  and  during  the  war  had  done  the  coun 
try  great  service  by  telling  Englishmen,  through  the  Daily 
News,  the  truth  concerning  American  conditions.  He  felt  that 
the  American  press  did  not  fairly  represent  the  thought  and 
opinions  of  educated  men.  He  wanted  to  "see  whether  the 
best  writers  in  America  cannot  get  a  fair  hearing  from  the 
American  public  on  questions  of  politics,  art,  and  literature 
through  a  newspaper."  Within  a  year  after  the  Nation  was 
established  a  discerning  observer  said  that  "it  will  do  much  to 
raise  the  reputation  of  American  journalism  in  Europe  and  by 
its  example  to  raise  the  tone  of  our  other  newspapers,"  and 
twenty  years  later  an  eminent  English  editor  called  it  the  best 
periodical  in  the  world.  It  has  been  said  that  all  the  problems 
of  democracy  had  a  fascination  for  Godkin,  and  into  the  dis 
cussion  of  them  he  flung  himself  with  enthusiasm  and  vigour 
equalled  only  by  his  breadth  and  keenness  of  understanding 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xm. 


The  Decline  of  Editorials  327 

and  the  clear,  pungent  attractiveness  of  his  style.  He  soon  made 
the  Nation  a  source  of  intellectual  and  political  inspiration  for 
that  somewhat  limited  number  to  whom  intellectual  journalism 
could  appeal.  Best  known  for  the  long  struggle  of  the  Nation 
for  civil  service  reform,  and  for  a  prolonged  and  finally  success 
ful  fight  against  Tammany,  through  the  Evening  Post,  of  which 
he  became  editor  in  1881,  and  for  other  great  combats  in  which 
popularity  was  never  considered,  Godkin  was  probably  the 
greatest  single  force  for  better  government  in  the  thirty  years 
following  the  war.  And  although  never  read  by  the  people 
generally,  he  profoundly  affected  the  leaders  of  thought  and  of 
journalism,  and  through  them  exerted  an  influence  no  less  wide, 
and,  certainly  no  less  vital  to  the  health  of  the  finer  type  of 
democracy,  than  that  of  men  whose  service  to  journalism  is 
more  frequently  mentioned  and  imitated. 

But  the  strongest  tendency  of  the  newspapers  was  not  indi 
cated  by  the  independence  of  a  Bowles  or  a  Godkin,  nor  by  any 
apparent  revival  of  the  idea  that  editorial  discussion  was  an 
important  function  of  the  newspaper.  Successors  of  the  early 
editorial  giants  were  found  in  Prentice,  Medill,  Grady,  Rhett, 
Gay,  Young,  Halstead,  McCullagh,  the  second  Samuel  Bowles, 
Rublee,  McKelway,  Hemphill,  and  Watterson,  to  mention  only 
a  few  of  many;  personality  continued  to  make  itself  felt,  as  it 
has  done  in  Henry  Watterson, — who  carried  into  the  new  cen 
tury  traits  of  a  journalism  fifty  years  old, — in  Scripps,  Otis, 
Nelson,  Scott,  and  scores  of  others;  but  by  the  early  eighties 
the  name  of  the  editor  had  become  relatively  unimportant 
along  with  the  editorial. 

The  principal  features  in  journalistic  development  after  the 
close  of  the  era  of  Reconstruction  were  the  transformation  of 
the  larger  papers  into  great  business  concerns  closely  connected 
with  the  manifold  increase  in  the  amount  of  advertising  printed, 
the  extension  and  minute  organization  of  news  service,  the  de 
velopment  of  variety  in  subject  matter,  and  the  growth  of  sen 
sationalism  in  the  treatment  of  news.  The  tremendous  growth 
of  advertising,  which  by  1890  had  become  the  principal  source 
of  income,  and  which  has  gained  greatly  since  then,  transferred 
the  controlling  interest  in  newspaper  policy  from  the  editorial 
office  to  the  business  office,  from  politics  to  salesmanship.  Cir 
culation  was  stimulated  to  furnish  an  outlet  for  advertising 


328  Newspapers  Since  1860 

rather  than,  as  in  earlier  times,  for  its  own  sake  as  a  source  of 
income  and  power. 

The  largest  single  factor  in  building  the  machinery  for  news- 
gathering  was  the  press  association.  After  a  period  of  change 
and  struggle  beginning  in  the  forties,  the  Associated  Press  grad 
ually  acquired  a  dominant  position,  taking  its  present  form  in 
1900,  and  growing  in  prestige  ever  since.  For  years  it  dealt 
only  with  routine  events  reported  by  its  clients,  but  in  later 
years  it  has  formed  a  staff  of  experienced  journalists  of  its  own, 
has  established  its  bureaus  in  all  leading  cities  in  this  country, 
in  the  capitals  and  the  larger  cities  of  Europe,  and  in  Cen 
tral  and,  more  recently,  South  America.  Except  that  the  lead 
ing  papers  maintain  special  correspondents  in  Washington,  all 
papers  obtain  most  of  their  news,  except  that  of  local  affairs, 
from  the  Associated  Press  or  one  of  its  two  chief  competitors. 
This  news  is  written  in  full,  and  printed,  usually,  as  served. 
Consequently  the  press  association  has  had  a  great  influence 
not  only  in  establishing  the  tenor  of  news  and  the  point  of  view 
in  reporting,  but  in  developing  a  uniform  style  in  news-writing 
as  well.  The  influence  has  been  one  of  restraint,  conservative 
and  sound,  and  for  thirty  years  has  tended  to  improve  the  tone, 
as  well  as  the  news  quality,  of  American  newspapers.  The  art 
of  reporting  and  interviewing  was  assiduously  cultivated ;  the 
practice  of  correspondence  declined,  and  along  with  it  the  atten 
tion  paid  to  foreign  news.  Although  the  Associated  Press  and 
several  newspapers  had  European  bureaus,  that  field  was  but 
superficially  covered  between  the  Civil  War  and  1898,  except 
for  a  few  exploits  during  the  Franco-Prussian  war.  The  war 
with  Spain  gave  occasion  for  some  of  the  most  brilliant  feats 
of  individual  reporting  yet  achieved,  and  in  its  sequel  served 
to  stimulate  interest  in  events  beyond  our  borders.  Several 
papers,  notably  the  Chicago  Daily  News,  built  up  staffs  in 
the  foreign  field  exceeding  in  scope  and  effectiveness  those  of 
any  other  newspapers  in  the  world.  But  in  general  the  foreign 
news  service  languished. 

The  most  conspicuous  and  pervasive  influence  was  the  sen 
sationalism  introduced  about  1880  and  reaching  its  climax 
early  in  the  present  century.  It  was  compounded  of  the  prac 
tices  first  exemplified  by  Bennett  and  of  all  subsequent  methods 
capable  of  appealing  to  popular  curiosity  and  emotion,  all  car- 


Sensationalism  329 

ried  to  extremes.  The  example  was  set  by  Joseph  Pulitzer,  a 
brilliant  journalist  of  Hungarian  birth  who  in  1878  bought  the 
St.  Louis  Post-Dispatch,  put  his  methods  into  effect  with  marked 
success,  and  in  1883  carried  his  idea  to  New  York,  where  he 
bought  the  moribund  World  from  Jay  .Gould  and  in  a  few  years 
made  it  the  most  profitable  and  the  most  widely  imitated  news 
paper  in  the  country.  In  the  hands  of  Pulitzer  the  new  jour 
nalism  was  much  more  than  merely  sensational.  His  purpose 
was  to  make  his  paper  an  organ  for  the  expression  of  popular 
opinion,  in  order  to  achieve  social  and  political  reforms  through 
giving  expression  to  the  democratic  will.  The  programme  he 
laid  down  in  1883  and  followed  vigorously  was  to  advocate  a  tax 
on  incomes,  inheritances,  luxuries,  monopolies,  and  privileges, 
to  reform  the  civil  service,  punish  corruption,  and  otherwise 
equalize  the  distribution  of  opportunities  and  advantages.  To 
that  end  he  produced  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  forcible 
editorial  pages  in  the  country. 

Journalistic  practice  was  less  influenced  by  the  example  of 
the  editorial  page  of  the  World,  however,  than  by  the  sensa 
tional  selection  and  treatment  of  news.  The  tone  of  the  paper 
was  brisk  and  vivacious,  the  subject  matter  appealed  to  the 
emotions  and  interests  of  the  largest  number  of  people  in  the  mid 
dle  and  lower  classes.  Wrongs  of  all  sorts  from  which  the  people 
suffered  were  to  be  corrected  by  the  exposure  of  startling 
examples.  Naturally,  having  found  the  way  to  make  a  start 
ling  appeal  through  the  recital  of  evil  and  misfortune,  it  was  dis 
covered  that  a  similar  appeal  to  any  emotions  produced  much 
the  same  result,  and  yellow  journalism  was  the  inevitable  sequel. 
The  many  papers  which  followed  the  example  of  Pulitzer  lacked 
the  fine  purpose  and  the  genius  of  their  model,  and  therefore 
imitated  only  the  blatancy,  the  vulgarity,  the  lack  of  restraint 
and  of  scruple  which  became  an  invariable  part  of  the  method. 

The  greatest  of  all  the  followers  of  Pulitzer  was  William 
Randolph  Hearst,  who,  beginning  with  the  San  Franciso  Exam 
iner  in  the  middle  eighties,  by  the  use  of  methods  much  the  same 
as  those  of  Pulitzer  soon  surpassed  the  elder  sensationalist 
because  he  was  untrammelled  by  other  journalistic  purposes 
than  the  most  profitable  news-vending.  Hearst's  task,  as  has 
been  said,  was  to  cheapen  the  newspaper  until  it  sold  at  the 
coin  of  the  gutter  and  the  streets.  So  he  rejected  news  which 


330  Newspapers  Since  1860 

1  'did  not  contain  that  thrill  of  sensation  loved  by  the  man  on 
the  street  and  the  woman  in  the  kitchen.  He  trained  his  men 
to  look  for  the  one  sensational  picturesque  fact  in  every  occur 
rence,  and  to  twist  that  fact  to  the  fore."  In  1895  ne  went  to 
New  York,  where  he  bought  the  Journal,  and  contested  with 
Pulitzer  for  the  palm  of  "yellow"  sensationalism.  He  won,  for 
by  the  close  of  the  century  the  World  had  begun  to  moderate 
its  tone  and  methods,  while  Hearst  had  only  fairly  begun  the 
career  which  has  strung  a  series  of  his  papers  from  coast  to 
coast  and  tainted  the  whole  of  American  journalism  with  cheap 
and  flashy  emotionalism. 

The  changes  which  the  example  of  these  leaders  brought 
into  the  newspapers  at  large  were  various,  and  not  all  unde 
sirable.  The  militant  journalists  exposed  abuses  and  accom 
plished  many  reforms  and  undoubtedly  made  themselves  feared 
by  many  wrongdoers.  And  in  doing  so  they  gained  in  boldness 
and  independence,  especially  so  far  as  politics  was  concerned. 
Not  only  have  Pulitzer  and  Hearst  attacked  some  of  the  oldest 
and  worst  abuses  of  intrenched  privilege;  they  have  been  the 
example  for  many  other  journalists,  who,  in  spite  of  extrava 
gances  and  mistakes,  have  helped  to  cure  many  an  evil  by  expos 
ing  it  to  the  light.  They  reached  an  ever  increasing  proportion 
of  the  population,  vastly  added  to  the  sum  of  general  knowledge 
among  the  least  literate  elements  of  the  population,  and  appealed 
to  a  greater  variety  of  interests  than  had  before  been  touched 
by  the  newspapers.  More  attention  was  given  to  amusements, 
to  sports,  to  the  special  domains  of  women  and  children.  The 
perfecting  of  mechanical  engraving  made  the  use  of  illustrations 
convenient  and  cheap,  and  the  possibilities  in  this  field  were 
promptly  exploited.  There  had  been  but  a  slight  increase  in 
the  use  of  cartoons  in  the  daily  newspapers,  even  after  the  great 
battle  of  pictures  in  the  campaign  of  1872,  until  the  World 
during  the  eighties  developed  that  feature  into  a  leading  char 
acteristic  of  popular  daily  journalism.  Its  popularity  and  its 
utility,  both  as  a  source  of  entertainment  and  as  a  ready  and 
effective  substitute  for  the  editorial,  have  never  decreased. 

Closely  related  to  this  aspect  of  growth  is  the  rise  of  the 
Sunday  supplement.  Sunday  newspapers  had  occasionally 
vexed  the  pious  all  through  the  nineteenth  century,  and  Sunday 
issues  of  daily  newspapers,  containing  some  news,  but  mainly 


Changing  Standards  331 

fiction,  features,  and  pictures,  had  gradually  found  a  place, 
especially  during  and  after  the  Civil  War,  when  seven  issues  a 
week  were  deemed  a  necessity.  But  the  old-fashioned  jour 
nalists  were  unfriendly  to  the  idea.  Greeley  in  the  later  fifties 
had  no  sympathy  with  the  proposal  of  Dana,  then  his  managing 
editor,  to  issue  a  Sunday  "picture  paper."  The  essence  of  the 
modern  Sunday  supplement  is  that  it  is  made  of  pictures,  light 
or  sensational  fiction,  accounts  of  the  strange,  mysterious,  or 
queer,  gossip  about  persons  of  interest  or  notoriety — the  froth 
iest  part  of  the  journalism  of  sensation.  Its  popularity  has 
been  due  in  great  measure  not  merely  to  the  lightness  of  tone 
but  to  the  "comics"  and  the  coloured  pages,  which  interest  the 
uneducated  and  the  very  young  without  making  any  demand  on 
the  intelligence.  Only  a  small  number  of  papers  have  been  able 
to  sustain,  against  the  demand  for  the  sensational,  a  Sunday 
supplement  of  real  literary  or  pictorial  worth. 

Although  sensationalism  has  contributed  much  of  value  to 
journalism,  much  that  is  undesirable  must  be  charged  against 
it.  One  of  its  staple  commodities  is  gossip,  scandal,  crime,  the 
whole  miserable  calendar  of  misery  and  ugliness  of  life,  served 
with  a  flavor  of  sentiment alism.  This  aspect  of  life  was  kept 
to  the  fore  in  the  leading  mongers  of  sensation,  and,  although 
the  worst  of  them  have  gradually  modified  their  tone  since 
the  closing  decade  of  the  last  century,  and  a  relatively  small 
number  of  papers  went  to  extremes  at  any  time,  the  effect  has 
been  general  and  lasting.  The  demand  for  gossip  led  to  ruth 
less  trespassing  on  the  right  of  privacy;  the  taste  for  exciting 
details  led  to  distortion  of  facts  or  deliberate  falsification;  the 
appetite  for  the  personal  and  concrete  induced  rank  abuses  of 
the  otherwise  admirable  development  of  the  interview.  The 
inevitable  effect  of  this  emphasizing  of  the  superficial  and  mere 
tricious  was  a  decline  in  the  more  substantial  content  of  the 
papers.  Instead  of  what  a  speaker  said,  appeared  light-hearted 
chatter  about  his  appearance,  the  audience,  an  interruption. 
Instead  of  the  substance  of  discussions  on  public  questions,  in 
Congress  or  elsewhere,  brief,  inconsequential  resumes  were  pro 
vided  by  writers  of  no  authority.  Against  this  tendency  the 
most  substantial  press  associations  have  exerted  a  constant  and 
helpful  influence,  and  a  growing  number  of  papers,  great  and 
small,  have  steadily  maintained  and  improved  many  of  the 


332  Newspapers  Since  1860 

better  characteristics  of  journalism ;  but  these  have  not  altered 
the  general  drift.  The  quality  of  editorial  discussion  has  de 
clined  along  with  that  of  the  news.  Discussion  and  criticism 
of  literature,  drama,  and  art  has  almost  disappeared  in  a  flood 
of  gossip  about  writers,  actors,  and  artists.  These  important 
matters,  which  were  once  a  leading  occupation  of  the  daily 
press,  have  been  driven  to  find  other  journalistic  lodgment. 

The  period  embraced  in  the  first  twenty  years  of  the  present 
century  may  not  inappropriately  be  characterized  as  one  of 
transition  and  specialization.  The  older  journalism  has  passed 
away  and  the  newer  has  not  yet  found  a  medium  of  control 
satisfactory  to  the  press  itself  and  to  society.  The  decay  of 
old  political  and  social  definitions  in  society  itself  has  aggra 
vated  and  prolonged  the  process.  As  additional  sources  of  news 
have  been  developed  and  the  machinery  for  gathering  and  dis 
tributing  the  product  has  been  improved,  the  problem  of  what 
to  do  with  the  available  material  has  become  increasingly  diffi 
cult  and  important.  In  so  far  as  a  solution  has  been  found,  it 
has  been  in  the  selection  of  news  and  in  the  growth  of  innumer 
able  papers  having  special  interests.  The  all-round  newspaper 
has  become  so  huge  an  undertaking,  entirely  dependent  on  the 
more  or  less  uncertain  whim  of  popular  favour,  that  the  organs 
of  special  interests  have  usually  taken  some  other  form. 

The  necessity  of  selecting  for  publication  only  a  small  part 
of  the  available  wealth  of  daily  news  has  made  of  the  news 
editor  the  judge  of  what  aspect  of  the  world's  activity  should  be 
presented  to  the  readers,  who  must  see  the  world  through  his 
eyes,  if  at  all,  and  has  placed  in  his  hands  incalculable  power  in 
moulding  public  opinion,  in  establishing  in  countless  ways  the 
levels  and  proportions  of  daily  thought  and  life.  This  has  always 
been  true  in  some  measure  of  course,  and  so  long  as  newspapers 
were  predominantly  political  the  bias  of  the  editor  was  under 
stood  and  discounted.  When  they  were  no  longer  mainly  con 
cerned  with  politics,  and  the  lines  of  cleavage  in  public  affairs 
became  uncertain,  shifting  from  the  political  to  the  social  and 
economic,  the  point  of  view  of  the  editor  became  not  only  increas 
ingly  important  to  the  reader  who  sought  the  light  of  truth  but 
also  increasingly  difficult  to  ascertain.  In  such  measure  as  the  line 
of  cleavage  has  been  established  between  the  two  chief  economic 
elements  in  society,  self-interest,  if  nothing  else,  would  naturally 


Recent  Manifestations  333 

have  led  the  greatly  capitalized  newspapers  to  look  at  life  from 
the  point  of  view  of  property  interest.  Enough  of  such  a  bias 
has  been  perceptible  to  arouse  a  profound  distrust  of  the  daily 
press  as  an  institution  in  which  the  point  of  view,  the  purposes, 
and  aspirations  of  large  classes  were  sure  of  adequate  or  sym 
pathetic  representation.  A  similar  distrust  of  the  Associated 
Press  has  arisen  for  precisely  the  same  reasons.  It  has  been 
the  avowed  aim  of  that  association  to  render  its  members  a 
service  entirely  uncoloured  by  prejudice,  and  so  long  as  political 
bias  was  the  only  one  to  be  taken  into  account  it  succeeded 
admirably.  Whether  justified  in  doing  so  or  not,  the  leaders 
and  sympathizers  in  labour  movements  and  other  manifestations 
of  new  social  and  industrial  forces  have  come  to  believe  that 
the  press  associations  have  the  same  restricted  outlook  as  the 
"capitalistic'*  press,  and  that  the  world  they  picture  day  by 
day  is  but  a  partial  world.  An  equally  widespread  possibility 
of  control  of  opinion  through  the  purposeful  selection  or  modi 
fication  of  intelligence  has  been  perceived  in  the  "plate  matter" 
furnished  to  thousands  of  smaller  papers  throughout  the  coun 
try  by  the  Western  Newspaper  Union. 

The  editorial  page  of  the  daily  newspaper  has  in  recent  years 
become  a  receptacle  for  humour,  health  hints,  religious  tidbits, 
questions  and  answers,  social  pleasantries,  and  other  miscellany, 
crowding  the  early  solid  area  of  discussion  and  debate  into  a 
column  or  two  of  uncertain  significance  or  value.  There  are 
striking  exceptions  to  this,  but  generally,  thoughtful  editorial 
discussion  has  gone  from  the  daily  papers  to  the  weeklies.  The 
inadequacy  of  American  newspapers  in  discussing  the  problems 
produced  by  the  World  War  is  a  sobering  manifestation  of 
present  journalistic  limitations.  No  errors  of  the  administra 
tion  during  the  latest  war  have  been  charged  to  the  compelling 
leaders  of  the  Greeleys  of  today. 

Such  papers  as  the  Outlook,  the  Independent,  the  Nation, 
and  other  survivors  from  an  earlier  period  have  come  to  have  a 
place  of  increased  importance  in  the  journalistic  scheme,  and 
have  been  joined  by  many  later  comers,  like  Collier's,  the  Survey, 
the  New  Republic,  theReview,  the  Liberator  (formerly  the  Masses}, 
Reedy' s  Mirror,  the  Dial,  the  Bellman  (some  of  which  have 
already  run  their  course  and  died),  and  a  number  of  others  to 
which  the  thinking  public  must  turn  for  much  important  but 


334  Newspapers  Since  1860 

unexciting  news  and  well-considered  discussion  of  matters  of 
current  interest.  There  have  also  arisen  a  number  of  party  or 
individual  organs,  like  Bryan's  Commoner,  La  Follette's,  and 
Harvey's  Weekly,  which  seek  to  preserve  the  personality  and 
individuality  now  almost  wholly  gone  from  the  daily  press. 

Enterprises  in  social  service  have  become  an  established  ac 
tivity  of  the  newspapers.  From  lending  aid  to  police  officials 
in  investigating  crime  and  detecting  criminals,  reporters  have 
proceeded  on  behalf  of  their  papers  and  the  public  to  many 
notable  exploits  of  this  kind.  These  have  been  in  large  measure, 
like  Stanley's  search  for  Livingstone,  undertaken  to  create  sen 
sational  news.  Related  to  this  conception  of  the  uses  of  a  news 
paper  go  the  departments  of  personal  aid,  giving  advice  in 
matters  of  health,  courtship,  manners,  law,  greatly  helpful, 
though  sometimes  reminiscent  of  the  Athenian  Mercury.  More 
ambitious  have  been  such  undertakings  as  the  long-continued 
campaign  carried  on  by  the  Chicago  Tribune  for  a  "sane 
Fourth"  and  the  Good  Fellow  movement  at  Christmas  time, 
the  series  of  free  lectures  and  other  educational  endeavours  of 
the  Chicago  Daily  News,  the  municipal  projects  of  the  Kansas 
City  Star,  the  fresh  air  funds,  ice  funds,  pure  milk  funds,  and 
other  philanthropic  projects  supported  by  many  papers.  These 
had  become  an  established  function  of  American  newspapers 
long  before  the  calamities  of  Europe  made  of  them  the  wonderful 
collectors  of  charitable  gifts  they  have  been  throughout  and 
since  the  war.  The  newspapers  have  made  efforts  to  prevent 
swindling  by  excluding  questionable  advertising  and  expos 
ing  frauds.  Some  have  gone  so  far  as  to  guarantee  their  adver 
tisements.  Others  have  established  "bureaus  of  accuracy  and 
fair  play"  and  made  systematic  plans  to  publish  corrections  of 
their  mistakes. 

While  the  newspapers  have  been  finding  new  ways  in  which 
to  serve  the  public,  the  public  through  state  and  Federal  laws 
has  been  manifesting  a  similar  interest.  In  1900  the  Associated 
Press  gave  up  its  charter  in  Illinois  and  secured  a  new  one  in 
New  York  because  the  Illinois  Supreme  Court  held  that  it  had 
"devoted  its  property  to  a  public  use  ...  in  effect,  granted 
to  the  public  such  an  interest  in  its  use  that  it  must  submit  to 
be  controlled  by  the  public,  for  the  common  good,  to  the  extent 
of  the  interest  it  has  thus  created  in  the  public  in  its  private 


The  World  War  335 

property."  In  somewhat  this  spirit,  laws  have  been  enacted 
within  the  present  century  requiring  the  publication  of  owner 
ship  and  circulation  of  newspapers,  stipulating  that  all  adver 
tisements  shall  be  labelled,  and  in  various  states  curtailing  the 
right  of  papers  to  emphasize  the  evil  exposed  in  divorce  and  other 
trials. 

These  manifestations  of  a  desire  to  make  the  newspapers  as 
clean  and  useful  as  possible  are  in  part  a  development  of,  in  part 
a  reaction  from,  the  era  of  sensationalism.  The  excesses  of 
that  era,  together  with  the  growing  wealth  of  the  larger  papers, 
and  a  clarifying  realization  of  the  vital  need  for  honest  news 
papers  with  more  than  a  commercial  purpose,  are  beginning  to 
show  secondary  consequences. 

The  principal  journalistic  result  of  the  World  War  was  the 
elimination  of  the  war  correspondent,  in  the  character  displayed 
in  previous  wars.  Scores  of  correspondents  went  to  Europe, 
and  the  burden  of  expense  laid  upon  the  newspapers  by  the 
enormous  conflict  and  the  excessive  cable  tolls  was  unprece 
dented.  But  the  correspondents  were  rigorously  restricted  in 
their  movements  and  their  reports  censored  so  thoroughly  that, 
although  a  vast  quantity  of  matter  was  transmitted,  for  the 
first  time  the  news  of  a  great  war  was  under  practically  com 
plete  governmental  control.  In  addition  to  being  subject  to 
the  trans-Atlantic  official  censorship  of  European  news,  our 
newspapers  united  in  a  voluntary  censorship  of  domestic  news, 
suggested  by  the  Committee  on  Public  Information.  Restric 
tions  were  laid  on  the  press  by  the  Espionage  and  other  laws 
which  led  to  considerable  suppression,  principally  through  de 
nial  of  mailing  privileges,  and  brought  up  for  consideration 
the  perennial  question  of  the  freedom  of  the  press. 

The  great  advance  during  and  since  the  World  War  accel 
erated  an  already  considerable  decrease  in  the  number  of  week 
lies  and  smaller  dailies  and  led  to  the  disappearance  of  many 
larger  papers,  including  some  of  the  oldest  and  best  known  in 
the  country.  War-time  conditions  served  also  to  diminish 
greatly  the  number  of  papers  printed  in  the  German  language, 
and  brought  sharply  to  public  notice  the  great  number  and 
influence  of  the  foreign-language  papers. 

American  newspapers  surpass  in  number  the  papers  of  all 
other  countries ;  they  have  steadily  for  many  decades  led  in  the 


336  Newspapers  Since  1860 

development  of  energy  and  resourcefulness  in  collecting  and  dis 
pensing  news,  as  well  as  in  adroitness  in  perceiving  and  satisfying 
popular  tastes  and  demands  for  information  and  entertainment. 
Unsettled  as  are  now  the  foundations  on  which  the  institution 
of  journalism  lies,  its  desire  and  ability  to  serve  what  it  con 
siders  the  best  public  interests  are  on  the  whole  remark 
able.  The  extravagances  of  sensationalism  are  passing  out  of 
fashion ;  newspaper  style,  despite  the  argot  of  sports  and  the 
extravagances  due  to  overzealous  pursuit  of  brightness  and 
catchiness  of  phrase,  is  gaining  in  effectiveness  and  finish ;  bar 
ring  the  spectacular  sheets,  no  other  newspapers  in  the  world 
show  such  typographical  beauty.  Within  the  present  century 
men  with  college  education  have  rapidly  replaced  the  earlier 
type  of  journalist,  and  multiplying  schools  of  journalism  are 
making  a  profession  of  the  trade. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

Political  Writing  Since  1850 

THE  year  1850  was  a  landmark  in  American  political  history. 
In  September  the  Great  Compromise  was  enacted.  It 
tempered  the  slavery  controversy  and  checked  impending 
secession.  To  abide  by  the  measure  or  to  reject  it  was  the  issue 
in  state  campaigns,  especially  in  the  cotton  states,  during  1851. 
There,  and  also  in  the  North  and  the  West,  the  Whigs  worked 
intensely  for  popular  support  of  the  compromise.  In  fact,  they 
seem  to  have  spent  their  strength  in  the  cause,  and  when  the 
country  accepted  "the  finality  of  the  compromise"  they  were 
unable  to  raise  a  new  issue,  and  their  organization  rapidly  went 
to  pieces  after  1 852 .  In  the  meantime  a  change  was  taking  place 
in  the  personnel  of  political  leadership.  Calhoun1  died  before 
the  compromise  bill  became  a  law,  Clay2  and  Webster3  in  1852. 
A  number  of  men  of  less  distinction  but  of  invaluable  service 
retired  from  politics  about  the  same  time:  Van  Buren  in  1848, 
likewise  Benton,  Winthrop  of  Massachusetts,  Ewing  of  Ohio, 
Foote  of  Mississippi,  and  Berrien  of  Georgia  in  1851.  With  the 
death  or  retirement  of  these  men  the  sentiment  for  union  which 
they  had  fostered,  declined.  Among  those  who  took  their  places 
partizanship  was  supreme,  and  until  the  advent  of  Lincoln  origi 
nality  and  sincerity  were  almost  totally  lacking.  It  is  not  sur 
prising,  therefore,  that  for  two  decades  after  1850  political 
thought  and  discussion  centred  around  inherited  issues  relat 
ing  to  sectionalism  and  nationality. 

In  the  South  the  philosophy  and  defence  of  slavery  and  of  a 

society  based  on  inequalities  among  its  members  became  the 

dominating  theme.     The  discussion  had  begun  a  generation 

earlier  with  the  memorable  debates  in  the  Virginia  Legislature 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xv.  *  Ibid.  3  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xvi. 

337 


338  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

of  1831.  To  a  committee  was  referred  a  number  of  petitions 
and  memorials  requesting  emancipation  or  colonization  of 
slaves  and  the  removal  of  free  negroes  from  the  state.  These 
furnished  the  cue  for  one  of  the  really  notable  books  in  the  his 
tory  of  American  political  thought,  Thomas  R.  Dew's  Review 
of  the  Debates  in  the  Virginia  Legislature  (1833).  The  author, 
after  graduation  from  William  and  Mary  at  the  early  age  of 
twenty,  travelled  and  studied  in  Europe;  then  in  1827  became 
Professor  of  History,  Metaphysics,  Natural  and  National  Law, 
Government  and  Political  Science  at  his  Alma  Mater,  and  in 
1836  was  made  president  of  the  institution.  His  writing  and 
teaching  marked  the  beginning  of  the  transition  in  the  South 
from  the  political  philosophy  of  the  Revolution  and  the  early 
nineteenth  century,  of  which  Jefferson  was  the  ablest  exponent, 
to  that  which  dominated  that  section  in  the  fifties.  He  argued 
against  emancipation  or  colonization.  His  reasons  were  based 
on  history,  religion,  and  economics.  Slavery  was  a  character 
istic  of  classical  civilization ;  it  was  approved  by  the  Scriptures ; 
and  in  America  the  slave-holding  states  produced  most  of  the 
country's  wealth — in  fact,  in  Virginia  the  sale  of  surplus  slaves 
equalled  each  year  the  value  of  the  tobacco  crop.  Moreover, 
emancipation  and  deportation  were  impractical  and  the  con 
dition  of  the  negro  slave  in  the  South  was  far  better  than  that 
of  the  native  African.  Professor  Dew  publicly  stated  what 
many  were  privately  thinking.  His  book  therefore  had  a  wide 
circulation  and  was  reprinted  in  1852  by  William  Gilmore 
Simms1  in  his  collection  entitled  Pro-Slavery  Argument. 

Dew's  defence  of  slavery  was  based  on  things  practical; 
others  sought  to  justify  it  through  political  and  social  philosophy. 
Consequently  the  theories  of  social  contract,  equality,  and  in 
alienable  rights,  immortalized  by  Jefferson,  were  subjected  to 
rigorous  criticism.  One  of  the  pioneers  in  this  task  was  Chan 
cellor  Harper  of  South  Carolina.  His  Memoir  on  Slavery,  pub 
lished  in  1838,  was  likewise  reprinted  in  Simms's  collection.  In 
contrast  to  the  dictum  of  Jefferson  that  "all  men  are  created 
free  and  equal"  Harper  declared  that  "man  is  born  to  subjec 
tion — as  he  is  born  to  sin  and  ignorance."  The  proclivity  of 
the  natural  man  is  to  dominate  or  to  be  subservient,  not  to 
make  social  compacts.  Civil  liberty  is  therefore  an  artificial 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  vn. 


Pro-Slavery  Arguments  339 

product,  and  the  inalienable  rights  of  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur 
suit  of  happiness  are  merely  unmeaning  verbiage.  There  is  no 
place  for  contract  as  the  basis  of  government,  since  it  is  "the 
order  of  nature  and  of  God  that  the  beings  of  superior  faculties 
and  knowledge,  and  superior  power,  should  control  and  dispose 
of  those  who  are  inferior."  It  is  therefore  as  much  in  the  order 
of  nature  that  "men  should  enslave  each  other,  as  that  animals 
should  prey  upon  each  other." 

Yet  Harper's  book  is  more  of  a  defence  of  Southern  society 
than  an  attack  on  existing  political  theories.  Such  an  attack 
was  more  definitely  the  aim  of  Albert  T.  Bledsoe,  Professor  of 
Mathematics  in  the  University  of  Virginia,  in  his  Liberty  and 
Slavery  (1856).  He  boldly  rejected  the  traditional  conceptions 
of  natural  liberty  and  the  origin  of  government.  Public  order 
and  private  liberty,  he  held,  are  non-antagonistic.  Civil  society 
is  "not  a  thing  of  compacts,  bound  together  by  promises  and 
paper,  but  is  itself  a  law  of  nature  as  irreversible  as  any  other." 
The  only  inalienable  rights  are  those  coupled  with  duty,  and 
they  do  not  include  life  and  liberty.  Another  teacher,  William 
A.  Smith,  President  of  Randolph  Macon  College,  gave  to  the 
public  the  arguments  already  presented  to  his  classes  in  his 
Lectures  on  the  Philosophy  and  Practice  of  Slavery  (1856).  Two 
aims  inspired  his  work :  to  show  ' '  that  the  philosophy  of  Jeffer 
son  is  false,  and  that  the  opposite  is  true,  namely,  that  the 
great  abstract  principle  of  domestic  slavery  is,  per  se  right," 
and  that  "we  should  have  a  Southern  literature,"  especially 
textbooks  in  which  there  should  be  no  poison  of  untruth.  The 
books  of  these  two  teachers  were  widely  circulated;  Bledsoe's 
was  especially  well-known,  finding  its  way  into  many  private 
libraries  of  the  age. 

Not  only  were  Jefferson's  ideals  combatted,  but  in  society  as 
organized  there  was  also  found  a  basis  for  the  defence  of  slavery. 
In  Europe  the  industrial  revolution  had  brought  in  its  train 
poverty,  child  labour,  distress,  new  social  philosophies,  and  re 
volt.  In  contrast  was  the  South  with  its  contented  labourers, 
its  planters  who  had  a  personal  interest  in  the  welfare  of  those 
dependent  on  them,  its  wealth,  its  conservatism,  and  its  spirit 
of  chivalry.  Here  lay  the  theme  of  George  Fitzhugh's  Sociology 
for  the  South  (1854).  In  Europe,  he  pointed  out,  free  labour  had 
resulted  in  exploitation  of  the  workers  by  the  capitalists.  There 


340  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

actual  conditions  demonstrated  the  failure  of  the  laissez  faire 
theory  of  economics  and  politics.  The  remedy  was  a  proper 
stratification  of  society  through  a  strong-armed  government. 
Let  the  state  see  that  men,  women,  and  children  have  employ 
ment  and  support .  To  this  end  let  the  English  Government  sub 
ordinate  the  mill  owners  to  the  state,  and  let  the  state  furnish 
them  employees  who  will  be  compelled  to  labour  by  the  govern 
ment  at  wages  fixed  by  the  state,  which  will  insure  a  decent 
living.  Thus  only  can  strife  and  poverty  be  abolished  in  Eng 
land.  In  our  own  country,  let  the  government  make  over  the 
public  lands  to  responsible  men,  to  be  entailed  to  their  eldest 
sons ;  let  the  landless  and  idle  population  of  the  Eastern  states 
be  attached  to  these  vast  tracts  of  land  as  tenants  for  life.  By 
such  a  process  peace  and  order  will  be  established.  ' '  Make  the 
man  who  owns  a  thousand  dollars  of  capital  the  guardian  (the 
term  master  is  objectionable)  of  one  white  pauper  of  average 
value ;  give  a  man  who  is  worth  ten  thousand  dollars  ten  pau 
pers,  and  the  millionaire  a  thousand.  This  would  be  an  act  of 
simple  justice  and  mercy;  for  the  capitalists  now  live  by  the  pro 
ceeds  of  poor  men's  labour,  which  capital  enables  them  to  com 
mand;  and  they  command  and  enjoy  it  in  almost  the  exact 
proportions  which  we  have  designated. ' '  Undoubtedly  this  pro 
gramme  of  rigid  state  control  was  not  acceptable  to  the  South ; 
but  Fitzhugh's  attack  on  free  society  and  its  political  philoso 
phy  was  approved,  and  his  work  in  revised  form  was  repub- 
lished  in  1857  under  the  title  Cannibals  All!  or  Slaves  Without 
Masters.  It  should  also  be  noted  that  Fitzhugh  was  an  admirer 
of  Thomas  Carlyle,  with  whom  he  corresponded,  and  that  his 
style  shows  unmistakable  evidences  of  the  great  Scotchman's 
influence. 

Pro-slavery  propaganda  was  not  confined  to  teachers  and 
publicists.  The  clergy  also  made  their  contribution.  Dr.  Thorn 
ton  Stringf ellow  of  Virginia  wrote  The  Bible  A  rgument  against 
Slavery  in  the  Light  of  Divine  Revelation  (i  850) .  The  Rev.  Fred 
A.  Ross  of  Alabama  in  his  Slavery  Ordained  of  God  (1857)  main 
tained  that  "Slavery  is  part  of  a  government  ordained  to  cer 
tain  conditions  of  fallen  mankind . ' '  Charles  Hodge x  of  Princeton 
with  learned  erudition  criticized  the  religious  argument  against 
slavery.  ' '  Parson  "  W.  G.  Brownlow  of  Tennessee,  in  a  memor- 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xvi. 


Pro-Slavery  Arguments  341 

able  debate  with  Abram  Prynne,  portrayed  the  advantages  of 
Southern  society  over  that  of  the  North.  Political  economists 
also  wrote  in  the  defence.  Edmund  Ruffin  of  Virginia,  success 
ful  planter,  pioneer  in  scientific  farming,  and  editor  of  agricul 
tural  journals,  in  his  Political  Economy  of  Slavery  (1857)  claimed 
blessings  for  the  existing  relation  of  master  and  slave.  David 
Christy  of  Cincinnati  in  Cotton  is  King  (1855)  showed  the  place 
of  the  plantation  system  in  the  wealth  of  the  nation  and  pointed 
out  the  need  of  more  territory  for  slavery  and  the  cultivation 
of  cotton. 

These  writings  and  others  of  minor  importance  are  the  rec 
ord  of  a  change  in  Southern  opinion,  the  passing  of  the  convic 
tion  that  slavery  is  inherently  wrong,  to  be  abolished  in  the 
future,  to  as  strong  a  conviction  that  slavery  is  right  per  se;  they 
also  mark  the  declining  influence  of  Jefferson's  political  ideas. 
The  constitutional  theories  of  states'  rights  and  secession,  to 
which  the  protagonists  of  slavery  looked  for  ultimate  defence, 
were  likewise  the  subject  of  discussion.  Calhoun's  Disquisition 
on  Government  and  Discourse  on  the  Constitution  were  posthu 
mously  published  in  1851.  Politics  gave  an  opportunity  to 
carry  to  the  people  the  constitutional  conceptions  of  the  great 
theorist.  This  was  notably  true  just  after  the  compromise  of 
1850  was  enacted,  when  a  definite  movement  was  inaugurated 
in  the  cotton  states  to  reject  the  compromise  and  bring  about 
secession.  Typical  was  the  trend  of  argument  and  appeal  in 
South  Carolina.  Edward  B.  Bryan,  in  advocating  immediate 
secession,  anticipated  one  of  Lincoln's  themes  when  he  wrote : 
' '  The  cement  is  broken ;  the  house  is  divided  against  itself.  It 
must  fall."  William  Henry  Trescott,  about  to  begin  a  long  ca 
reer  in  diplomatic  service,  likewise  wrote;  "The  only  safety  for 
the  South  is  the  establishment  of  a  political  centre  within  itself ; 
in  simpler  words,  the  formation  of  an  independent  nation." 
The  aged  Langdon  Cheves  wrote  the  following  call  to  the  South 
ern  people : ' '  Unite,  and  you  shall  form  one  of  the  most  splendid 
empires  on  which  the  sun  ever  shone,  of  the  most  homogeneous 
population,  all  of  the  same  blood  and  lineage,  in  soil  most  fruit 
ful,  and  in  climate  most  fruitful.  But  submit — submit!  The 
very  sound  curdles  the  blood  in  my  veins.  But,  Oh,  Great  God, 
unite  us,  and  a  tale  of  submission  shall  never  be  told." 

Against  this  rabid  sectionalism  there  were  a  few  notable 


342  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

protests.  William  J.  Grayson,  Collector  of  the  Port  of  Charles 
ton,  and  a  lifelong  champion  of  slavery,  boldly  opposed  the 
secession  movement  in  his  state.  So  too  did  Benjamin  F. 
Perry,  an  up-country  editor,  and  Bishop  Ellison  Capers  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church.  It  is  also  a  strange  coincidence 
that  a  nationalistic  philosophy,  as  radical  as  that  of  the  seces 
sionists  when  compared  with  the  thought  of  earlier  days,  also 
emanated  from  South  Carolina.  Its  author  was  Francis  Lieber, 
a  German  liberal  who,  persecuted  in  his  native  land,  sought 
refuge  in  America  and  became  Professor  of  Political  Economy 
in  South  Carolina  College — a  position  he  held  from  1835  to 
1857,  when  he  went  to  New  York  to  join  the  faculty  of  Colum 
bia  College.  Like  contemporary  Southerners,  he  rejected  the 
social  compact  theory;  he  could  assign  no  definite  explanation 
for  the  origin  of  the  state,  but  found  it  to  be  in  the  institutional 
forces  of  human  nature.  Most  significant  was  the  distinction 
he  drew  between  the  people  and  the  nation.  The  former  sig 
nifies  ' '  the  aggregate  of  the  inhabitants  of  a  territory  without 
any  additional  idea ' ' ;  the  latter  implies  a  homogeneous  popula 
tion  having  "an  organic  unity  with  one  another  as  well  as  being 
conscious  of  a  common  destiny."  In  other  words,  the  nation 
is  organic,  not  contractual,  in  nature.  In  it,  not  in  the  indi 
vidual  states,  lies  sovereignty,  which  is  one  and  indivisible. 
Such  was  the  elemental  thought  in  Lieber 's  Political  Ethics 
(1838)  and  Civil  Liberty  and  Self  Government  (1853),  books 
which  in  time  profoundly  influenced  political  science  in  the 
United  States.  That  Lieber,  holding  such  views  and  also  hav 
ing  no  sympathy  for  slavery,  could  live  so  long  in  the  very  heart 
of  the  cotton  kingdom,  is  remarkable.  While  his  son  lost  his 
life  in  the  Confederate  Army,  Lieber  became  legal  advisor  to 
President  Lincoln  and  was  the  author  of  Instructions  for  the 
Government  of  the  Armies  of  the  United  States  in  the  Field,  which 
was  a  starting  point  for  more  humane  rules  of  warfare,  both 
in  this  country  and  abroad. 

Against  slavery  there  were  a  few  notable  protests  in  the 
South.  They  were  made,  however,  in  the  interest  of  the  white 
man  rather  than  of  the  negro.  Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe,  a  North 
Carolinian,  and  editor  of  newspapers  in  his  native  state  and 
Washington,  published  in  1846  a  pamphlet  in  which  he  con 
cluded  that  ' '  capital  invested  in  slaves  is  unproductive  in  that 


"The  Impending  Crisis "  343 

it  only  serves  to  appropriate  the  wages  of  the  labourer."  In  1858 
he  also  issued  his  Southern  Platform,  a  digest  of  the  opinions  of 
"the  most  eminent  southern  Revolutionary  characters"  upon 
the  subject  of  slavery,  which  was  widely  circulated.  In  Vir 
ginia,  Dr.  Henry  Ruflner,  President  of  Washington  College,  the 
present  Washington  and  Lee  University,  advocated  in  1847  the 
gradual  emancipation  of  slaves  in  the  western  counties  of  the 
state,  on  the  ground  that  slavery  was  destructive  to  the  best 
interests  of  the  white  people.  After  a  lengthy  demonstration  of 
the  evils  induced  by  slave  labour,  he  declared : ' '  Delay  not,  then, 
we  beseech  you,  to  raise  a  barrier  against  this  Stygian  inun 
dation — to  stand  at  the  Blue  Ridge,  and  with  sovereign  energy 
say  to  this  Black  Son  of  misery;  'Hitherto  shalt  thou  come,  and 
no  farther!' "  But  the  Southern  protest  par  excellence  was  The 
Impending  Crisis  of  the  South  (1859),  the  work  of  Hinton  Rowan 
Helper  of  North  Carolina.  With  the  moral  aspect  of  slavery 
he  had  no  interest ;  that  he  left  to  Northern  writers,  especially 
to  ' '  Yankee  wives ' '  who  have  ' '  written  the  most  popular  anti- 
slavery  literature  of  the  day.  Against  this  I  have  nothing  to 
say;  it  is  all  well  enough  for  women  to  give  the  fictions  of  sla 
very;  men  should  give  the  facts."  These  facts  were  suggested 
to  him  by  a  visit  to  the  free  states  of  the  West.  Their  wealth 
and  prosperity,  as  compared  with  conditions  in  the  home  coun 
try,  made  a  deep  impression  upon  him.  He  thereupon  made  a 
study  of  the  comparative  resources  and  development  of  the 
slave  and  free  states.  His  conclusion  was  that  slavery  was  a 
positive  evil  to  the  white  men  of  the  South.  Notable  was  the 
distinction  he  drew  between  the  slaveholders  who  were  numeri 
cally  in  the  minority,  but  shaped  the  public  policy,  and  the  non- 
slaveholders,  numerically  in  the  majority,  but  having  little  po 
litical  power.  Let  the  latter  organize,  take  over  the  govern 
ment,  exclude  the  slavocracy  from  office  holding,  and  abolish 
the  institution  which  sapped  the  strength  of  the  country.  The 
book,  published  after  some  difficulty,  became  exceedingly  pop 
ular  in  the  North,  and  was  reprinted  in  1859  as  a  campaign 
document.  In  the  South  it  was  regarded  as  incendiary  litera 
ture;  agents  who  distributed  it  were  imprisoned  and  fined,  and 
any  one  possessing  a  copy  was  regarded  as  a  traitor  to  his  coun 
try.  Among  those  who  had  commended  the  book  was  John 
Sherman,  candidate  for  the  speakership  of  the  House  of  Repre- 


344  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

sentatives  in  1859.  During  the  contest  this  fact  was  brought 
into  the  discussion.  Thereupon  a  Virginia  congressman  de 
clared  that  "one  who  consciously,  deliberately,  and  of  purpose 
lends  his  name  and  influence  to  the  propagation  of  such  writing 
is  not  only  not  fit  to  be  Speaker,  but  he  is  not  fit  to  live."  Yet, 
strange  to  say,  the  particular  passage  which  called  forth  this 
remark  was  a  quotation  from  the  Virginia  Debates  of  1831. 

Between  the  extremes  represented  by  Helper  and  Thomas 
Dew,  there  existed  a  moderate  school  of  thought,  which  ac 
knowledged  the  evils  of  slavery,  especially  the  burden  it  im 
posed  upon  the  whites,  but  deprecated  any  artificial  attempt 
toward  its  abolition.  This,  it  was  held,  time  and  natural  causes 
would  bring  about.  Such  a  writer  was  J.  H.  Hammond,  of 
South  Carolina.  In  his  Letters  on  Slavery,  written  in  reply  to  the 
criticisms  of  Thomas  Clarkson,  he  conceded  that  slavery  was 
more  expensive  than  free  labour,  but  that  the  remedy  lay  not  in 
immediate  abolition  but  in  an  increase  in  the  density  of  the 
population,  which  would  make  the  supply  of  free  labour  more 
available.  Likewise  George  M.  Weston,  a  native  of  Maine,  who 
lived  in  Washington,  pointed  out,  in  his  Progress  of  Slavery  in 
the  United  States  (1857),  the  steady  encroachment  of  free  labour 
upon  slave  labour  along  the  border  of  the  South,  the  ultimate 
advantage  in  the  continuance  of  this  process,  and  the  purely 
political  character  of  the  demand  for  the  extension  of  slavery 
into  the  territories  of  the  Northwest.  Such  undoubtedly  were 
the  convictions  of  thousands;  but  they  smacked  too  much  of 
compromise  in  a  decade  when  an  increasing  number  of  radicals, 
North  and  South,  would  yield  not  one  jot  or  one  tittle  from 
their  respective  positions. 

While  Southern  thought  was  being  moulded  into  the  unity 
of  conservation,  opposite  tendencies  were  at  work  in  the  North 
and  West.  Trade-unionism  took  on  new  life  about  1 850,  and  Wil 
liam  H.  Sylvis,  the  first  great  figure  in  the  American  labour 
movement,  began  his  agitation.  Wilhelm  Weitling,  a  German 
immigrant,  introduced  the  ideas  of  Marxian  socialism.  In  the 
demand  for  suffrage  and  broader  legal  rights  for  women, 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  Jo 
seph  Sayers,  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  and  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton 
were  leaders.  Traditional  political  alignment  was  threatened 
by  the  American  or  Know  Nothing  movement,  which  sought 


"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  345 

to  capitalize  the  prejudice  against  those  of  foreign  birth  and 
the  Catholic  faith.  Among  its  propagandists  were  S.  F.  B. 
Morse,  whose  Foreign  Conspiracies  Against  the  Liberties  of  the 
United  States  (1852)  ran  through  seven  editions,  and  Thomas  R. 
Whitney,  author  of  a  Defense  of  American  Policy  as  Opposed  to 
the  Encroachment  of  Foreign  Influence  (1856).  These  issues, 
also  the  industrial  development  and  commercial  expansion, 
tended  to  divert  attention  from  the  slavery  question.  Indeed, 
the  capitalists  of  the  Northeast  and  the  large  planters  of  the 
cotton  states  drifted  toward  a  rapprochement.  Noteworthy 
also  was  the  fact  that  many  defenders  of  slavery  were  found 
among  the  clergy  of  the  North,  and  that  silence  on  the  issue 
became  the  policy  of  the  churches.  The  Rev.  Nehemiah 
Adams  won  notoriety  by  his  favorable  South  Side  View  of 
Slavery  (1854),  as  did  also  Nathan  Lord,  President  of  Dart 
mouth  College,  the  Rev.  Samuel  Seabury  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  Moses  Stuart,  Professor  of  Hebrew  at  Andover,  and 
John  Henry  Hopkins,  Episcopal  Bishop  of  Vermont,  for  their 
various  defences  of  slavery. 

Three  factors,  however,  kept  alive  and  stimulated  the  moral 
interest  in  human  bondage.  One  of  these  was  the  Federal  Fugi 
tive  Slave  Law,  a  part  of  the  Great  Compromise.  There  was 
considerable  violence  in  resisting  its  enforcement,  but  its  great 
est  contribution  was  to  inspire  a  novel — Harriet  Beech er 
Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  (1852),  a  book  which  the  author 
declared  to  be  "a  collection  and  arrangement  of  real  incidents, 
of  actions  really  performed,  of  words  and  expressions  really  ut 
tered,  grouped  together  with  reference  to  a  general  result,  in 
the  manner  that  a  mosaic  artist  groups  his  fragments  of  various 
stones  into  one  general  picture."  The  political  significance  of 
the  book  was  that  it  made  the  people  of  the  North  and  the  West 
ponder  questions  which  the  Great  Compromise,  it  was  generally 
said,  had  settled.  Very  significant  was  its  influence  on  the 
rising  generation.  Says  James  Ford  Rhodes: 

The  mothers'  opinion  was  a  potent  factor  in  politics  between  1852 
and  1860,  and  boys  in  their  teens  in  the  one  year  were  voters  in  the 
other.  It  is  often  remarked  that  previous  to  the  war  the  Republican 
party  attracted  the  great  majority  of  schoolboys,  and  that  the  first 
voters  were  an  important  factor  in  the  final  success  .  .  .  the 
youth  of  America  whose  first  ideas  on  slavery  were  formed  by  read- 


346  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

ing  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  were  ready  to  vote  with  the  party  whose 
existence  was  based  on  opposition  to  the  extension  of  the  great  evil. 

Abroad,  the  book  made  a  deep  impression.  It  was  translated 
into  twenty- three  languages,  and  over  a  million  copies  were 
sold  in  the  British  Empire. * 

A  second  factor  in  stimulating  interest  in  the  slavery  issue 
was  the  Kansas  Nebraska  Act  of  1854,  by  which  more  territory 
was  opened  to  the  slave  system.  The  moral  revolt  which 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  had  kindled  took  the  form  of  political  action 
in  the  organization  of  the  Republican  party.  A  new  group  of 
leaders  sought  to  arouse  the  conscience  of  the  country.  Among 
them  was  Charles  Sumner,  of  Massachusetts,  member  of  the  Sen 
ate  from  1851  to  1874.  In  the  movement  against  slavery  he  is 
the  logical  successor  of  John  Quincy  Adams, 2  with  the  excep 
tion  that  his  opposition  was  moral  as  well  as  political.  His 
pamphlets,  Crime  against  Kansas  (i  856)  and  Barbarism  of  Slavery 
(1860)  were  circulated  by  the  million.  Not  the  equal  of  Web 
ster  as  a  constitutional  lawyer,  and  too  often  extremely  personal 
in  his  discussion  of  Southern  policies,  he  was  a  most  skilful  and 
resourceful  special  pleader  in  a  great  cause.  With  him  should 
be  mentioned  William  H.  Seward,  a  noted  politician  of  New 
York  and  chief  figure  in  the  Republican  party  in  the  East. 
His  presentation  of  the  "irrepressible  conflict"  which  would 
make  the  United  States  "a  slave-holding  nation  or  a  free  labour 
nation"  did  much  to  crystallize  opinion  in  the  East.  The  crisis 
also  brought  forth  Abraham  Lincoln,  who  re-interpreted  the 
American  theory  of  democracy.  As  the  author  of  political 
phrases  and  aphorisms,  he  is  equalled  only  by  Jefferson.  ' '  No 
man  is  good  enough  to  govern  another  man  without  that 
other's  consent"  applies  the  principle  of  democracy  to  the 
fact  of  slavery.  "When  the  white  man  governs  himself,  that 
is  self-government;  but  when  he  governs  himself  and  also 
governs  another  man,  that  is  more  than  self-government — that 
is  despotism."  Finally,  the  Dred  Scott  case  brought  the  slavery 
issue  to  a  climax,  for  in  that  decision  it  was  evident  that 
the  Supreme  Court  was  pro-slavery.  Shortly  followed  the 
Lincoln-Douglas  debates,  in  which  Lincoln  pointed  out 
the  antithesis  between  popular  sovereignty  and  the  Dred 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  XL  a  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xv. 


Constitutional  Theories  in  War-Time     347 

Scott  decision.     Thereafter  his  leadership  in  the  West  was 
unquestioned. x 

The  advent  of  war  forced  the  nationalists  to  re-shape  their 
political  theories.  The  legal  and  constitutional  proofs  that  the 
United  States  was  a  nation,  advanced  by  Webster  and  his 
school,  had  not  counteracted  sectionalism;  the  conflict  of  arms 
threatened  to  demonstrate  how  baseless  they  were.  Moreover 
the  conduct  of  the  war  brought  about  a  certain  disregard,  on 
the  part  of  the  government,  of  various  limitations,  rights,  and 
liberties  set  forth  in  the  Constitution.  It  is  not  strange,  there 
fore,  that  a  new  basis  for  nationality  was  sought,  not  in  the 
Constitution  or  the  old  political  formulas,  but  in  the  hard 
school  of  necessity.  Thus  President  Lincoln  declared  that 
"measures  otherwise  unconstitutional  might  become  lawful  by 
becoming  indispensable  to  the  preservation  of  the  constitution 
through  the  preservation  of  the  Nation."  Pertinent  also  were 
the  words  of  Sydney  George  Fisher  written  in  1852:  "If  the 
Union  and  the  Government  cannot  be  saved  out  of  this  terrible 
shock  of  war  constitutionally,  a  Union  and  a  government  must 
be  saved  unconstitutionally."  The  pathway  for  the  new 
thought  had  already  been  indicated  by  Francis  Lieber,  and  soon 
the  organic  theory,  with  sovereignty  in  the  nation  rather  than 
the  states,  was  well  under  way.  Very  significant  was  the  effort 
to  distinguish  between  the  written  and  the  unwritten  constitu 
tion.  Thus  J.  A.  Jameson,  eminent  jurist  and  exponent  of  the 
new  school,  divided  constitutions  into  two  classes;  those  which 
are  organic  growths,  the  products  of  social  and  political  forces, 
and  those  which  are  "instruments  of  evidence,"  the  results  of 
attempts  to  express  in  language  the  sense  of  organic  growth. 
Likewise  Orestes  A.  Brownson,2  a  devoted  Catholic,  who  found 
in  the  church  fathers  and  the  traditions  of  early  Christianity 
the  principles  of  democracy,  distinguished  between  the  consti 
tution  of  the  state  or  nation  and  the  constitution  of  the  govern 
ment.  In  the  same  vein  was  the  declaration  of  John  C.  Kurd, 
that  "sovereignty  cannot  be  an  attribute  of  law  because  by  the 
nature  of  things,  law  must  proceed  from  sovereignty,"  and  con 
sequently  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  cannot  be  cited 
as  evidence  for  the  sovereignty  of  the  states  or  the  nation. 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xxn. 

2  See  also  Book  II,  Chap,  vm  and  Book  III,  Chap.  xix. 


348  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

Naturally,  by  such  writers  sovereignty  is  conceived  as  undi 
vided  and  as  being  in  the  nation,  and  the  social  compact  and 
related  political  theories  are  rejected.  With  the  passing  of 
years  their  views  have  predominated.  Thus  the  war  which 
"joined  with  bayonets"  the  Union,  like  the  defence  of  slavery, 
caused  a  decline  of  the  political  theory  of  the  Revolutionary 
and  federal  periods. 

Among  the  practical  problems  in  the  preservation  of  nation 
ality  were  certain  measures  taken  to  preserve  unity  behind  the 
military  lines,  the  treatment  of  conquered  enemies  and  their 
property,  and  the  relations  between  the  South  and  the  national 
government.  States'  rights  ideas  were  widely  disseminated  in 
the  North  and  West  and  there  was  also  much  sympathy  with 
secession.  Consequently  the  executive  authority  expanded; 
particularly  military  arrests  and  the  denial  of  the  writ  of  habeas 
corpus  were  frequent.  Captured  Confederates  were  not  exe 
cuted  as  traitors,  yet  Confederate  property  was  confiscated. 
These  matters,  and  the  kindred  question  of  emancipation  and 
conscription,  were  the  subject  of  extensive  legal  and  constitu 
tional  discussion,  of  which  Whiting's  War  Powers  (1862  et  seq.) 
was  the  most  comprehensive.  The  eclipse  of  constitutional 
rights  enjoyed  in  time  of  peace  and  the  supremacy  of  the  war 
powers  became  the  chief  issue  in  politics.  "The  Constitution 
as  it  is,  and  the  Union  as  it  was"  became  the  slogan  of  the 
opposition.  In  New  York  the  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  Polit 
ical  Knowledge,  with  S.  F.  B.  Morse  as  president,  was  active 
in  the  publication  of  pamphlets  criticizing  the  measures  of  the 
administration.  Its  objects  were  to  popularize  the  principles 
of  constitutional  liberty  "to  the  end  that  usurpation  may  be 
prevented,  that  arbitrary  and  unconstitutional  measures  may 
be  checked,  that  the  Constitution  may  be  preserved,  that  the 
Union  may  be  restored,  and  that  the  blessings  of  free  institu 
tions  and  public  order  may  be  kept  by  ourselves  and  be  trans 
mitted  to  our  Posterity."  Among  the  contributors  to  its 
pamphlets  were  Morse,  Samuel  J.  Tilden,  and  George  Ticknor 
Curtis.  Likewise,  in  the  defence  of  the  administration,  the 
Loyal  Publication  Society  was  organized,  and  among  the  writers 
for  its  publications  were  Francis  Lieber,  Robert  Dale  Owen, 
and  Peter  Cooper.  Much  of  the  literature  in  criticism  of  the 
government  has  been  lost.  Of  that  which  survives,  D.  A. 


Opposition  to  Lincoln's  Administration   349 

Mahoney's  Prisoner  of  State  (1863),  the  recital  by  an  Iowa 
editor  of  his  own  imprisonment  and  that  of  others,  is  illustra 
tive.  The  author's  theme  is  summarized  in  the  following 
sentence  from  the  dedication : 

To  you,  then,  far  beyond  and  above  all  others  of  the  monsters 
which  have  been  begotten  by  the  demon  of  fanaticism  which  is 
causing  our  country  to  be  desolated,  belongs  the  distinction  of  con 
necting  your  name  with  this  work,  not  only  to  live  in  the  memory 
of  the  deeds  which  you  have  caused  to  be  committed,  but  to  be 
kept  forever  present  in  the  American  mind  whenever  it  recurs  in 
time  to  come  to  that  period  in  American  history  when  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States  was  first  abrogated,  when  the  Govern 
ment  of  the  Union  was  subverted,  and  when  the  rights  and  liberties 
of  the  American  People  were  trampled  like  dust  beneath  the  feet  of 
a  person  clothed  in  a  little  brief  authority  which  is  used  to  subvert 
and  destroy  that  which  it  should  preserve,  protect  and  defend,  and 
who  uses  as  the  heel  of  his  despotism,  you,  Edwin  M.  Stanton. 

More  widely  known  was  the  case  of  Clement  L.  Vallanding- 
ham.  A  member  of  Congress  and  actively  engaged  in  cam 
paigning  against  the  administration  in  1863,  he  was  arrested 
by  military  authority,  tried  by  court  martial,  and  sentenced 
to  imprisonment.  The  sentence  was  commuted  by  President 
Lincoln  to  exile  within  the  Confederate  lines.  The  episode  led 
to  the  writing  of  Edward  Everett  Kale's  short  story,  A  Man 
Without  a  Country  (1863),  of  which  five  hundred  thousand 
copies  were  sold  within  thirteen  years. 

The  relation  of  the  South  to  the  Union  became  the  subject 
of  discussion  with  the  first  signs  of  Federal  victory,  and  grew 
acute  with  the  close  of  hostilities.  If  secession,  as  the  Lincoln 
administration  had  claimed,  was  unconstitutional  and  the 
Southern  states  had  never  been  out  of  the  Union,  it  seemed 
logical  for  those  states  to  resume  their  functions  under  the  Con 
stitution,  by  participating  in  Federal  elections,  by  sending  rep 
resentatives  to  Congress,  and  by  exercising  other  rights  gener 
ally  guaranteed  to  the  states.  Such  a  policy  was  in  harmony 
with  antebellum  nationalism,  and  it  was  advocated  by  leading 
Southerners.  But  such  a  procedure  did  not  harmonize  with  the 
new  sense  of  nationality ;  it  made  no  guarantee  against  another 
experiment  in  secession;  and  it  might  also  restore  to  political 


350  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

authority  in  the  South  the  very  class  that  had  been  in  power 
in  1860.  For  these  reasons  four  contrary  theories  were  evolved. 
They  were  given  the  names  Presidential,  State  Suicide,  Con 
quered  Province,  and  Forfeited  Rights.  According  to  the 
Presidential  theory,  the  Southern  states,  though  they  had  never 
been  out  of  the  Union,  no  longer  had  constitutional  govern 
ments.  To  establish  such  governments,  representative  in  form 
and  loyal  to  the  Union,  the  President  proposed  to  lend  aid,  and 
even  to  exercise  a  certain  amount  of  control.  This  theory  was 
formulated  by  Lincoln  and  was  notable  for  its  liberal  conditions, 
which  the  Southerners  might  easily  fulfil.  Application  was 
attempted  in  Louisiana,  Arkansas,  and  Tennessee.  But  the 
Presidential  plan  was  too  lenient  for  the  leaders  of  Congress, 
even  under  the  stricter  terms  imposed  by  Andrew  Johnson. 
Hence  Charles  Sumner  advanced  the  theory  of  State  Suicide. 
Although  the  states  had  not  been  out  of  the  Union,  the  adop 
tion  of  ordinances  of  secession  had  caused  them  to  commit 
felo  de  se,  and  they  were,  therefore,  in  the  status  of  territories, 
for  which  Congress  should  prescribe  rules  and  regulations. 
More  extreme  was  the  Conquered  Province  theory  of  Thaddeus 
Stevens,  of  Pennsylvania,  which  held  that  the  states  in  question 
had  lost  all  their  rights  under  the  Constitution,  and  were  merely 
so  much  conquered  territory,  possessing  only  the  rights  they 
might  claim  under  international  law.  Finally,  by  the  Forfeited 
Rights  theory,  the  states  had  never  been  out  of  the  Union,  but 
had  forfeited  certain  rights  under  the  Constitution,  which 
could  be  restored  only  through  the  direction  of  Congress.  These 
theories,  the  controversies,  the  violence,  and  the  bitterness 
which  developed  over  their  adoption  or  rejection,  were  but  the 
birth  pangs  of  a  new  political  and  constitutional  order.  For  the 
ultimate  result,  the  theory  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  Texas  vs. 
White  is  also  pertinent;  that  the  Constitution,  in  all  its  provi 
sions,  looks  to  "an  indestructible  Union,  composed  of  inde 
structible  states."  The  great  monuments  of  the  new  sense  of 
nationality,  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth,  and  fifteenth  amend 
ments,  likewise  precipitated  questions  which  have  enriched  le 
gal  literature.  What  is  involuntary  servitude?  How  inclusive 
are  rights  and  liberties?  What  is  due  process  of  law?  When 
does  a  state  deny  suffrage  on  the  ground  of  race,  colour,  or  pre 
vious  condition  of  servitude?  Meanwhile,  the  view  of  the 


Memoirs  351 

Union  which  had  made  secession  possible  was  given  able  and 
sympathetic  defence  by  Alexander  H.  Stephens  in  his  War  Be 
tween  the  States  (1868),  by  Jefferson  Davis  in  the  Rise  and  Fall 
of  the  Confederate  States  (1881),  and  by  Bernard  J.  Sage's  Repub 
lic  of  Republics  (1865). 

One  of  the  characteristics  of  literature  in  America  since  the 
war  has  been  the  increasing  number  of  personal  narratives, 
autobiographies,  memoirs,  and  diaries.  Many  of  these  arise 
from  a  desire  to  tell  one's  relation,  however  humble,  to  the  great 
conflict  and  its  heroes — a  desire  which  possessed  all  classes  and 
conditions  from  the  commanders  of  armies  to  Mrs.  Keckley,  the 
coloured  serving  woman  of  Mrs.  Lincoln.  Others  have  an  aim 
primarily  political,  to  recount  policies  and  movements  in  which 
the  authors  participated.  In  the  latter  class  a  few  have  pre 
eminence.  Hugh  McCulloch's  Men  and  Measures  of  Half  a  Cen 
tury  (1888)  is  invaluable  for  financial  history  and  its  sketches 
of  conditions  in  the  West.  John  Sherman's  Recollections  of 
Forty  Years  (1895)  is  likewise  important  for  financial  meas 
ures,  and  is  also  an  uncommonly  good  revelation  of  political 
opportunism.  S.  S.  Cox's  Three  Decades  of  Federal  Legislation 
(1885)  is  notable  for  a  lengthy  account  of  reconstruction  in  the 
Southern  states,  which  was  written  by  Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe 
and  inserted  without  explanation  of  authorship.  G.  S.  Bout- 
well's  Sixty  Years  in  Public  Affairs  (1902)  is  entertaining  for 
its  sketches  of  public  men,  and  is  also  illustrative  of  the  limita 
tions  of  mind  and  training  in  the  average  American  politician. 
Inimitable  are  the  Reminiscences  of  Benjamin  Perley  Poore,  with 
their  intimate  sketches  of  men  and  events  around  Washington 
for  half  a  century.  The  Autobiography  of  G.  F.  Hoar  (1903) 
reveals  a  blind  devotion  to  party  in  a  soul  of  unquestioned  integ 
rity.  Surpassing  all  other  narratives  by  contemporaries  is  the 
Diary  of  Gideon  Welles  (1911),  Secretary  of  the  Navy  under 
Lincoln,  rich  for  the  light  it  throws  on  personalities  and  animos 
ities  in  the  cabinet  and  on  political  conditions  in  1866,  and 
revolutionary  in  its  interpretation  of  Andrew  Johnson. 

While  Northern  politicians  vied  with  each  other  to  tell  their 
story,  the  leaders  of  the  South,  with  the  exception  of  the  mili 
tary  men,  were  singularly  silent,  Alexander  H.  Stephens'sPm0;z 
Diary  and  John  H.  Reagan's  Memoirs  (1906)  being  the  only 
intimately  personal  accounts  by  the  political  leaders  of  the  Con- 


352  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

federacy.  But  so  personal  in  tone  as  to  make  them  almost 
autobiographical  are  Fielder's  Life  and  Times  of  Joseph  E. 
Brown  and  Dowd's  Life  of  Zeb  Vance,  and  the  writings  of  E.  A. 
Pollard,  a  Richmond  editor  during  war  time. *  Humorous,  but 
accurately  portraying  certain  types  of  Southern  character,  is 
Charles  H.  Smith's  Bill  Arp  So  Called,  a  book  which  in  a  period 
of  economic  depression  and  political  disappointment  had  the 
power  to  make  Southerners  laugh.  Among  the  Southern  mal 
contents  who  had  no  sympathy  for  secession,  two  left  accounts 
of  their  opinions  and  experiences.  "Parson"  Brownlow,  who 
was  expelled  from  Tennessee  early  in  the  war,  published  in 
1862  his  Sketches  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  Secession,  replete 
with  quotations  from  the  contemporary  Southern  press.  A  few 
years  later  a  Virginian,  John  M.  Botts,  made  Southern  policies 
the  subject  of  denunciation  in  his  Great  Rebellion  (1866)  and 
started  a  memorable  historical  controversy  by  declaring  that 
Lincoln  had  offered  to  surrender  Fort  Sumter  provided  that 
the  Virginia  convention  of  1861  would  adjourn  without  tak 
ing  action  on  secession. 

Closely  related  to  the  autobiography  were  the  reports  of 
newspaper  correspondents  and  tourists.  These  were  especially 
noticeable  between  1865  and  1876  when  the  economic  and  so 
cial  upheaval  in  the  South  was  a  subject  of  general  interest.  Of 
this  literature,  some  was  "inspired,"  notably  the  reports  made 
to  President  Johnson  in  1866  by  B.  C.  Truman,  Carl  Schurz, 
and  General  Grant.  Other  contributions  to  this  class  of  writ 
ing  were  Whitelaw  Reid's  After  the  War,  Sidney  Andrew's  The 
South  Since  the  War,  and  J.  T.  Trowbridge's  The  South,  all  pub 
lished  in  1866.  More  notable  were  the  books  of  two  former 
abolitionists,  J.  S.  Pike  and  Charles  Nordhoff ;  the  former  left 
a  memorable  description  of  the  barbarism  of  negro  rule  in  South 
Carolina  in  his  Prostrate  State  (1874),  and  the  latter  gave  a  val 
uable  account  of  Southern  conditions  in  his  Cotton  States  in  1875 . 
The  personal  experiences  of  a  Northerner  during  his  residence  in 
the  South  were  the  basis  for  the  novels  of  A.  W.  Tourgee, 2  and 
of  similar  character  is  A.  T.  Morgan's  Yazoo,  or  On  the  Picket 
Line  of  Freedom  in  the  South. 

Hardly  had  the  Civil  War  ended  when  other  questions,  in 

1  For  other  memoirs,  see  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xv. 
*  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xi. 


Civil  Service  Reform  353 

addition  to  those  involving  theories  with  respect  to  the  nature 
of  the  nation,  claimed  public  attention.  Of  these  four  were  of 
primary  importance  and  were  productive  of  a  new  trend  in 
political  thought:  civil  service  reform,  tariff  reform,  the  cur 
rency,  and  the  farmer's  movement. 

The  spoils  system  had  long  characterized  office  holding  in 
the  United  States.  Shortly  after  1865  certain  general  influences 
made  possible  the  agitation  for  efficiency  and  merit  in  the  pat 
ronage.  Among  these  were  the  revelations  of  inefficiency  in  the 
conduct  of  the  war,  the  conflict  between  Andrew  Johnson  and 
Congress  over  control  of  the  patronage,  and  examples  of  cor 
ruption  in  contemporary  life.  Especially  did  the  activities  of 
the  Tweed  Ring,  ridiculed  in  the  celebrated  cartoons  of  Thomas 
Nast,  create  a  sense  of  revolt  against  the  existing  order.  The 
pioneer  in  the  movement  for  new  standards  in  the  public  service 
was  Thomas  A.  Jenckes  of  Rhode  Island.  A  lawyer,  a  man  of 
wealth,  and  a  congressman,  he  secured  the  reference  of  the  ap 
pointing  system  to  the  committee  on  retrenchment  in  1866. 
The  resulting  report,  submitted  in  1868,  is  "the  effective  start 
ing  point"  in  the  modern  movement  for  civil  service  reform  in 
this  country.  Yet  there  was  at  first  little  interest  in  the  cause. 
Mr.  Jenckes  was  aptly  compared  to  "Paul  at  Athens,  declaring 
the  unknown  God."  The  average  citizen  regarded  corruption 
as  an  unavoidable  evil.  The  professional  politician  had  only 
sneers  for  the  reformer.  Said  Roscoe  Conkling:  "When  Dr. 
Johnson  defined  patriotism  as  the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel, 
he  was  then  unconscious  of  the  then  undeveloped  capabilities 
of  the  word  'reform.'" 

In  a  few  years  recruits  were  gathered  from  the  intellectual 
and  literary  class.  George  William  Curtis, x  editor  and  essayist, 
was  chairman  of  the  first  commission  to  draft  rules  for  the  civil 
service.  After  Congress  failed  to  provide  an  appropriation  and 
also  after  a  period  of  flirtation  with  the  issue  by  political  parties, 
Curtis  became,  in  1881,  the  first  president  of  the  National 
Civil  Service  League.  For  ten  years  he  was  "the  intellectual 
head,  the  guiding  force,  and  the  moral  inspiration  of  the  Civil 
Service  movement.  The  addresses  he  delivered  at  the  annual 
meetings  of  the  League  were  like  milestones  in  the  progress  of 
the  work — he  reported  to  the  country  what  had  been  done  and 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xm. 

VOL.  Ill — 23 


354  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

what  was  still  to  be  done,  enlightening  public  sentiment,  en 
couraging  his  fellow-labourers  and  distributing  with  even-handed 
justice,  praise  and  reproof  among  the  political  parties  as  they 
deserved  it."  Other  early  leaders  of  the  cause  were  Dorman  B. 
Eaton,  whose  Civil  Government  in  Great  Britain  (1880)  ranks 
with  Jenckes's  report  in  the  literature  of  the  reform  movement; 
Carl  Schurz,  Curtis 's  successor  as  head  of  the  Civil  Service  Re 
form  League  and  champion  of  the  movement  in  the  President's 
cabinet;  Andrew  D.  White1  and  Charles  W.  Eliot,  presidents  of 
Cornell  and  Harvard ;  and  a  group  of  young  politicians,  among 
whom  were  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  Henry  Cabot  Lodge. 
Soon  the  attitude  toward  civil  service  reform  became  the  test 
of  executive  independence. 

Hayes  was  notable  for  the  aid  he  rendered  it,  while  Cleve 
land's  declaration  "Public  office  is  a  public  trust"  won  for  him 
wide  popularity.  The  principle  involved,  that  efficiency  and 
merit  rather  than  party  loyalty  should  be  the  standard  for  pub 
lic  office,  aroused  the  interest  of  the  intellectual  class  as  had 
no  other  issue  except  that  of  slavery.  It  caused  thousands  to 
break  party  lines  and  played  a  great  part  in  the  rise  to  power  of 
the  independent  vote. 

The  movement  for  tariff  reform  paralleled  and,  in  many 
respects,  was  similar  to  that  for  civil  service  reform.  Just  as 
the  existing  political  machines  were  wedded  to  the  spoils  system, 
the  Republican  party  was  identified  with  the  policy  of  protec 
tion.  It  had  won  the  election  of  1860  very  largely  on  that  issue, 
had  put  the  policy  into  practice  during  the  war,  and  after  the 
conflict  continued  it.  The  result  was  a  period  of  exploitation 
of  natural  resources,  great  increase  in  manufacturing,  alternat 
ing  periods  of  speculation  and  trade  depression  due  to  displace 
ment  of  capital,  and  special  privileges  for  special  interests. 
Leadership  and  protest  came  to  a  large  extent  from  the  class 
from  which  came  the  early  agitation  for  civil  service  reform — the 
intellectuals.  The  pioneer  was  David  A.  Wells,2  chairman  of 
the  Revenue  Commission  which  made  recommendations  for  a 
readjustment  of  national  finances  from  a  war  to  a  peace  basis. 
His  examination  of  conditions  in  the  United  States  caused  a 
radical  reaction  in  his  views;  from  a  protectionist  he  became  a 
violent  anti-protectionist.  His  report  to  Congress  in  1870  was 

'  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xv.  *  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xxiv. 


Tariff  Reform  355 

extremely  free  trade  in  tone,  and  deserves  a  place  with  that  of 
Jenckes  on  the  civil  service  as  indicating  the  dawn  of  a  new  po 
litical  thought,  while  his  Creed  of  a  Free  Trader  (1875)  more 
definitely  set  forth  his  convictions. 

Equally  notable  was  the  influence  of  William  G.  Sumner, l 
Professor  of  Political  and  Social  Science  in  Yale  College.  In 
classroom  and  before  the  public,  by  lecture,  pamphlet,  and 
book,  he  assailed  the  protectionist  system  as  "an  arrant  piece 
of  economic  quackery,"  masquerading  "under  such  an  air  of 
learning  and  philosophy  "  as  deserved  only ' '  contempt  and  scorn, 
satire  and  ridicule."  No  one  did  more  than  he  to  lay  the  basis 
of  new  thought  concerning  our  national  economy.  To  the  manu 
facturing  and  commercial  classes  protectionism  was  a  fetish, 
essential  to  American  prosperity;  and  whoever  rejected  it  or 
even  questioned  it  could  not  be  a  patriot.  It  is  not  surprising, 
therefore,  that  Wells  was  accused  of  sympathy  for  the  "lost 
cause"  of  the  Confederacy,  even  of  being  bribed  by  British  gold 
to  advance  free  trade  principles,  and  that  there  was  a  demand 
that  Professor  Sumner  be  removed  from  his  position  at  Yale. 
However,  the  increasing  surplus  in  the  national  treasury  and  the 
demand  for  tariff  reform  by  the  Democratic  party  relieved  anti- 
protectionism  of  its  opprobrium.  The  campaign  of  1888  was 
notable,  for  both  political  parties  sought  to  inform  the  voter  on 
the  tariff  issue  by  book  and  pamphlet,  as  well  as  by  speech  and 
editorial.  Wells,  in  his  Relation  of  Tariff  to  Wages,  pointed  out 
that  higher  wages  in  the  United  States  are  the  results  of  the 
productiveness  of  labour  rather  than  of  the  protectionist  policy. 
Sumner 's  Protectionism  answered  in  simple  but  bellicose  lan 
guage  the  stock  arguments  of  the  protectionists.  Half  a  dozen 
other  works,  about  equally  divided  in  defence  and  criticism  of 
the  existing  tariff  policy,  were  issued  during  the  campaign,  and 
the  presidential  campaign  four  years  later  was  also  notable  for 
a  similar  tariff  literature.  The  results  on  public  opinion  were 
favourable  to  the  anti-protectionists ;  ever  since  the  criticism  of 
protection  has  steadily  increased  and  the  more  scholarly  writ 
ings  on  the  tariff  have  been  with  a  few  exceptions  unsympa 
thetic  toward  the  principle  of  protection. 

Agitation  for  civil  service  reform  and  revision  of  the  tariff 
centred  in  the  East.  On  the  other  hand,  the  agrarian  agita- 
*  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xxiv. 


356  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

tion  and  the  demand  for  more  liberal  coinage  of  silver  were  West 
ern  movements.  Rapid  settlement  and  the  exploitation  of  the 
West  with  borrowed  capital,  insufficient  commercial  facilities 
and  high  rates  of  interest,  and  speculation  in  railway  construc 
tion  created  economic  depression  in  that  region.  For  relief,  the 
farmers  in  the  seventies  organized  the  "Grange"  or  "Patrons 
of  Husbandry,"  a  secret  society.  Among  its  objects  were 
co-operation  in  business  and  state-regulation  of  public  utilities. 
The  grievances  and  purposes  of  the  organization  were  reflected 
in  scores  of  periodicals;  also  in  three  widely  circulated  books, 
Jonathan  Perriam's  Groundswell,  E.  W.  Martin's  History  of  the 
Granger  Movement,  and  0.  H.  Kelley's  Origin  and  Progress  of  the 
Patrons  of  Husbandry. 

Now  the  prevailing  doctrine  was  that  of  economic  individual 
ism,  which  emphasized  the  sanctity  of  private  property,  the  de 
velopment  of  natural  resources  under  private  direction  only, 
and  the  laissez  faire  theory  of  economics .  With  this  the  agrarian 
experiments  in  co-operation  and  the  demand  for  state  control 
were  at  variance.  The  conflict  of  ideals  deeply  influenced 
jurisprudence,  for  it  raised  the  question  of  public  regulation 
of  railroads  and  other  utilities  versus  the  rights  of  property 
guaranteed  by  the  Constitution.  Undoubtedly  one  purpose  of 
the  fourteenth  amendment  was  to  afford  protection  to  property 
interests  against  hostile  legislation ;  but  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  was  not  prone  to  extend  the  scope  of  Federal 
supervision,  and  in  1876  it  upheld  an  Illinois  statute  regulating 
grain  elevators.  "For  protection  against  abuses  by  legisla 
tures  the  people  must  resort  to  the  polls,  not  to  the  courts." 
Twelve  years  later,  however,  in  the  celebrated  Minnesota 
Rate  Case  the  court  took  the  opposite  opinion,  holding  that 
the  reasonableness  of  railroad  rates  was  a  question  for  ju 
dicial  review. 

The  question  of  the  reasonableness  of  the  rate  of  charge  for 
transportation  by  the  railroad  company,  involving  as  it  does  the  ele 
ment  of  reasonableness  both  as  regards  the  company,  and  as  regards 
the  public,  is  eminently  a  question  for  judicial  determination.  If 
the  company  is  deprived  of  the  power  of  charging  reasonable  rates 
for  the  use  of  its  property,  and  such  deprivation  takes  place  in  the 
absence  of  the  investigation  by  judicial  machinery,  it  is  deprived  of 
the  lawful  use  of  its  property,  and  thus  in  substance  and  effect,  of 


Agrarian  Movements  357 

the  property  itself  without  due  process  of  the  law  and  in  violation 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

Deep  was  the  significance  of  this  decision;  property  inter 
ests  now  found  protection  against  public  regulations,  and  nat 
urally  the  courts  became  the  object  of  increasing  criticism  by 
those  who  were  discontented  with  the  existing  social  and  eco 
nomic  order. 

The  Grange  and  the  minor  political  parties  identified  with 
it  declined,  but  a  second  wave  of  discontent  in  the  eighties  was 
the  background  for  the  Farmers'  Alliance  and  the  Populist 
party  of  the  early  nineties.  In  the  whole  range  of  American 
political  literature  no  document  is  more  remarkable  than  the 
Populist  platform  of  1892;  it  summarized  the  existing  discon 
tent  and  recommended  remedies  which,  generally  regarded  at 
the  time  as  too  radical  ever  to  be  applied,  today  are  a  part  of 
our  orthodox  political  system.  Most  of  the  literature  relating 
to  Populism  is  ephemeral;  but  of  real  artistic  merit  is  The 
Kansas  Bandit,  or  the  Fall  of  Ingalls,  a  dramatic  dialogue  in 
spired  by  the  defeat  of  Senator  Ingalls  of  Kansas  in  his  contest 
for  re-election  to  the  United  States  Senate. 

Parallel  with  the  agrarian  movement  was  the  demand  for 
bimetallism ;  indeed  Senator  Peffer  in  his  Farmers'  Side  urged 
free  silver  as  a  remedy  for  the  grievances  of  the  farmers.  The 
"battle  of  the  standards"  became  the  all  absorbing  political 
issue  between  1 888  and  1 896.  Most  of  the  economists  favoured 
the  gold  standard,  notably  Professor  J.  Laurence  Laughlin  of  the 
University  of  Chicago.  His  History  of  Bimetallism  in  the  United 
States  was  more  than  a  history;  it  was  also  a  defence  of  mono 
metallism,  and  was  widely  quoted  throughout  the  silver  agita 
tion.  The  minority  of  the  economists,  who  defended  bimetal 
lism,  was  best  represented  by  E.  Benjamin  Andrews,  President 
of  Brown  University,  in  his  An  Honest  Dollar.  So  strongly 
was  the  monometallic  theory  favoured  among  the  conservative 
classes  of  the  East  that  President  Andrews's  contrary  views 
were  one  cause  of  his  resignation  from  Brown  in  1897. 
But  the  piece  de  resistance  in  the  whole  agitation  was  W.  H. 
Harvey's  Coin's  Financial  School  (1894),  a  little  book,  simple 
in  style,  graphic  in  illustration,  which,  reprinted  during  the 
campaign  of  1896,  enjoyed  a  circulation  similar  to  that  of  the 


358  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

Impending  Crisis  in  1860.  A  reply  to  his  arguments,  in  imita 
tive  style,  was  made  by  Horace  White  in  Coin's  Financial 
Fool. 

In  the  meantime,  whatever  complacency  the  average  man 
of  business  between  1875  and  1890  possessed  was  rudely  shaken 
by  three  phenomena :  the  rapid  organization  of  labour,  the  trust 
movement,  and  the  disfranchisement  of  the  negro.  The 
Knights  of  Labour,  the  first  extensive  labour  organization  in 
the  United  States,  disturbed  the  balance  of  American  temper. 
Said  Francis  Walker,1  the  economist:  "Rarely  has  the  scep 
tical,  practical,  compromising  spirit  of  our  people,  which  leads 
them  to  avoid  extremes,  to  distrust  large  expectations  and  to 
take  all  they  can  get,  'down/  for  anything  they  have  in  hand, 
however  promising,  so  far  lost  control  of  our  acts  and  thoughts 
and  feelings."  The  nascent  consciousness  of  labour  was  well  re 
flected  in  Powderley's  Thirty  Years  oj  Labour,  the  author  being 
official  head  of  the  Knights. 

The  tendency  towards  combination  in  industry  was  the  sub 
ject  of  many  investigations  by  Congress  and  state  legislatures. 
These  disclosed  notorious  methods  of  competition  and  sinister 
activities  in  "politics.  Here  was  the  subject  matter  of  Henry 
Demorest  Lloyd's  Wealth  vs.  Commonwealth  (1894),  a  popular 
presentation  of  the  methods  and  policies  of  the  Standard  Oil 
Company.  Startling  facts  concealed  in  the  masses  of  legislative 
documents  and  court  proceedings  were  dramatically  marshalled. 
In  shaping  public  opinion  the  book  has  a  place  not  unsimilar 
to  that  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  Finally,  in  spite  of  the  guar 
antees  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  amendments,  negroes  in 
the  South  endured  discrimination  in  "Jim  Crow  car  laws"  and 
police  regulations,  and  in  1890  and  after  they  were  practically 
disfranchised  in  seven  of  the  Southern  states.  Convictions 
born  of  race  proved  superior  to  the  mandates  of  government. 

Contemporary  with  political  agitation  went  a  transforma 
tion  in  economic  thought  and  the  philosophy  of  government. 
Its  immediate  cause  was  a  remarkable  growth  of  industrialism 
with  its  attendant  concentration  of  wealth,  poverty,  and  in 
equality  in  the  enjoyment  of  luxuries. 

Criticism  was  started  by  Henry  George2  in  his  Progress  and 
Poverty  (1879): 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xxiv.  *Ibid. 


Taxation  359 

So  long  as  all  the  increased  wealth  which  modern  progress  brings 
goes  but  to  build  up  great  fortunes,  to  increase  luxury  and  make 
sharper  the  contrast  between  the  House  of  Have  and  the  House  of 
Want,  progress  is  not  real  and  cannot  be  permanent.  The  reaction 
must  come.  The  tower  leans  from  its  foundations,  and  every  new 
story  but  hastens  the  final  catastrophe.  To  educate  men  who  must 
be  condemned  to  poverty,  is  but  to  make  them  restive ;  to  base  on  a 
state  of  most  glaring  social  inequality  political  institutions  under 
which  men  are  theoretically  equal,  is  to  stand  a  pyramid  on  its  apex. 

The  remedy  was  an  application  of  the  physiocratic  doctrine  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  land  of  each  country  belongs  to 
all  of  its  people  but  it  is  occupied  or  used  by  individuals.  There 
fore  all  land  rents,  or  taxes  on  rents,  should  be  used  for  the  com 
mon  good,  thus  removing  all  existing  revenues.  Thus  abol 
ishing  taxes  on  labour  and  production  would  stimulate  wages 
and  profits.  Land  values  would  decline  and  land  held  for  spec 
ulation  would  be  thrown  in  the  market.  This  argument  won 
great  popularity  and  George  suddenly  became  the  leader  of  a 
new  movement — the  single  tax.  It  had  much  popularity  and 
influence  abroad;  it  contributed  to  the  introduction  of  incre 
ment  taxes  in  Germany  and  Australia;  in  England  it  was  well 
received  on  account  of  the  Irish  situation.  In  the  United  States 
it  has  had  less  practical  results,  but  one  of  the  attendant  theo 
ries — that  wages  are  paid  out  of  the  value  created  by  labour, 
not  out  of  capital — has  had  a  wide  acceptance.  Gradually, 
also,  all  types  of  economist  emphasized  questions  of  distri 
bution  and  the  ground  of  the  older  individualistic  laissez  faire 
school  was  abandoned.  The  great  question  of  taxation  was 
subjected  to  analysis  and  new  sources  of  revenue  were  defended 
in  Max  West's  Inheritance  Tax  and  E.  R.  A.  Seligman's  Essays 
on  the  Income  Tax.  Thus  within  fifteen  years  after  the  publica 
tion  of  George's  work  the  revision  of  America's  tax  systems 
was  well  under  way.  Reform  was  openly  advocated  by  liberals 
and  bitterly  opposed  by  conservatives.  Illustrative  of  the  con 
servative  view  were  the  words  of  Justice  Field  in  the  decision 
by  which  the  Federal  income  tax  law  of  1894  was  declared 
unconstitutional:  "The  present  assault  upon  capital  is  but  the 
beginning.  It  will  be  but  the  stepping-stone  to  others  larger 
and  more  sweeping  till  our  political  conditions  will  become  a 
war  of  the  poor  against  the  rich;  a  war  growing  in  intensity 


360  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

and  bitterness."  In  contrast  was  the  more  liberal  spirit  in 
Justice  Harlan's  dissenting  opinion: 

The  practical  effect  of  the  decision  today  is  to  give  certain  kinds 
of  property  a  position  of  favouritism  and  advantage  inconsistent 
with  the  fundamental  principles  of  our  social  organization,  and  to 
invest  them  with  power  and  influence  that  may  be  perilous  to  that 
portion  of  the  American  people  upon  whom  rests  the  larger  part  of 
the  burdens  of  the  Government  and  who  ought  not  to  be  subjected 
to  the  dominion  of  aggregated  wealth  any  more  than  the  property 
of  the  country  should  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  lawless. 

In  the  meantime  a  vision  of  a  new  and  radically  different 
social  and  industrial  order  was  popularized  in  1888  in  Edward 
Bellamy's  Looking  Backward.1  The  book  was  a  romance  in 
which  the  hero,  after  going  to  sleep  in  1887,  awakes  in  the  year 
2000  to  find  vast  changes.  He  learned  that 

there  were  no  longer  any  who  were  or  could  be  richer  or  poorer  than 
others,  but  that  all  were  economic  equals.  He  learned  that  no  one 
any  longer  worked  for  another,  either  by  compulsion  or  for  hire,  but 
that  all  alike  were  in  the  service  of  the  nation  working  for  the  com 
mon  fund,  which  all  equally  shared,  and  even  necessary  personal 
attendance,  as  of  the  physician,  was  rendered  as  to  the  state,  like  that 
of  a  military  surgeon.  All  these  wonders,  it  was  explained,  had  very 
simply  come  about  as  the  results  of  replacing  private  capitalism  by 
public  capitalism,  and  organizing  the  machinery  of  production  and 
distribution,  like  the  political  government,  as  business  of  general 
concern  to  be  carried  on  for  the  public  benefit  instead  of  private  gain. 

The  book  was  extremely  popular  for  a  few  years.  Bellamy 
Clubs  were  organized  to  discuss  the  questions  it  suggested,  and 
it  became  the  confession  of  faith  of  the  Nationalist  party. 

Equally  important  was  the  new  criticism  of  the  operation 
of  government  and  its  purposes.  This  began  with  Woodrow 
Wilson's  Congressional  Government  (1885),  which  pointed  out 
the  evil  results  in  the  existing  relations  of  the  executive  and  the 
legislature,  notably  the  irresponsibility  in  legislation  and  the 
lack  of  leadership  in  Congress,  which  his  own  administration 
has  since  so  well  illustrated.  A  few  years  later  Frank  J.  Good- 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xi. 


Functions  of  Government  361 

now  pointed  out  the  defects  in  the  American  theory  of  the 
separation  of  powers;  indeed  his  Comparative  Administrative 
Law  (1893)  was  the  first  work  in  English  on  administrative 
as  distinct  from  constitutional  law.  John  R.  Commons  in 
his  Proportional  Representation  (1896)  advanced  a  substitute 
for  the  existing  unjust  methods  of  representation.  Munici 
pal  government  also  became  the  subject  of  criticism.  A 
supplementary  chapter  to  Bryce's  American  Commonwealth 
on  the  Tweed  Ring  caused  the  whole  first  edition  of  that  excel 
lent  book  to  be  suppressed.  E.  L.  Godkin  pointed  out  the 
weaknesses  in  the  government  of  our  large  cities  in  his  Unfore 
seen  Tendencies  of  Democracy,  while  Albert  Shaw  showed  the 
superiority  in  municipal  ideals  and  forms  of  government  of 
English  and  Continental  cities  as  compared  with  those  of  the 
United  States.  Finally,  the  function  of  the  state  was  re-exam 
ined.  The  early  conception,  born  in  the  days  of  the  Revolution, 
that  the  function  of  the  state  is  confined  to  the  protection  of 
life,  liberty,  and  property  yielded  to  one  more  comprehensive. 
Thus  Woolsey  declares  that  "  the  sphere  of  the  State  may  reach 
as  far  as  nature  and  the  needs  of  men  reach."  Woodrow 
Wilson  in  his  The  State  advocated  state  regulation  in  indus 
trial  matters.  W.  W.  Willoughby  makes  the  economic,  indus 
trial,  and  moral  interests  of  the  people  "one  of  the  essential 
concerns  of  the  state";  and  John  W.  Burgess,  working  under 
the  influence  of  German  rather  than  American  ideals,  makes 
the  ultimate  aim  of  the  state  "the  perfection  of  humanity,  the 
civilization  of  the  world;  the  perfect  development  of  human 
reason  and  its  attainment  to  universal  command  over  individ 
ualism;  the  apotheosis  of  man." 

The  changes  in  the  viewpoint  of  the  leaders  of  thought  came 
as  a  shock  to  the  pillars  of  conservatism.  Not  infrequently  the 
writings  and  influence  of  teachers  cost  them  their  positions 
in  colleges  and  universities. 

In  the  meantime  a  startling  change  took  place  in  foreign 
policy.  From  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  to  1898  the  native 
mania  for  territorial  expansion  was  held  in  restraint.  Alaska, 
it  is  true,  had  been  acquired,  but  an  excuse  was  found  in  a  desire 
to  accommodate  Russia.  The  offer  by  Denmark  and  Sweden  of 
their  West  Indian  possessions  was  rejected.  Instead  of  annex 
ing  Hawaii  in  1894 tne  sovereignty  of  a  native  queen  was  openly 


362  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

supported.  With  this  sort  of  background  came  the  Spanish- 
American  War  of  1898,  and  with  it  the  annexation  of  Hawaii, 
and  in  its  train  the  establishment  of  a  protectorate  over  Porto 
Rico  and  the  acquisition  of  the  Philippines.  For  this  sudden 
shift  to  a  policy  of  territorial  expansion  economic  conditions 
were  largely  responsible.  By  1890  more  manufactured  goods 
were  produced  than  were  necessary  for  home  consumption  and 
the  nation  began  to  compete  with  European  countries  in  the 
markets  of  the  world.  By  1898  the  country  was  filled  with  cap 
ital,  production  was  greater  than  consumption,  and  interest 
rates  were  falling.  The  leaders  of  industry  were  alarmed  over 
the  unrest  in  labour  and  intellectual  circles ;  to  them  the  remedy 
seemed  to  lie  in  a  foreign  policy  which  would  encourage  trade 
expansion.  The  argument  for  such  a  policy  was  ably  presented 
by  Charles  A.  Conant: 

There  are  three  important  solutions  of  this  enormous  congestion 
of  capital  in  excess  of  legitimate  demand.  One  of  these  is  the  social 
istic  solution  of  the  abandonment  of  saving,  the  application  of  the 
whole  earnings  of  the  labourer  to  current  consumption,  and  the  sup 
port  of  old  age  out  of  taxes  levied  upon  production  of  the  community. 
It  will  be  long  before  this  solution  will  be  accepted  in  a  comprehen 
sive  form  in  any  modern  civilized  state.  The  second  solution  is  the 
creation  of  new  demands  at  home  for  the  absorption  of  capital. 
This  has  occurred  at  several  previous  stages  of  the  world's  history, 
and  is  likely  to  continue  as  long  as  human  desires  continue  expan 
sible.  But  there  has  never  been  a  time  before  when  the  proportion 
of  capital  to  be  absorbed  was  so  great  in  proportion  to  possible  new 
demands. 

Aside  from  the  waste  of  capital  in  war,  which  is  only  a  form  of 
consumption,  there  remains,  therefore,  as  the  final  resource,  the 
equipment  of  new  countries  with  the  means  of  production  and  ex 
change.  Such  countries  have  yet  to  be  equipped  with  the  mechan 
ism  of  production  and  of  luxuries  which  has  been  created  in  the 
progressive  countries  of  recent  generations.  They  have  not  only  to 
obtain  buildings  and  machinery — the  necessary  elements  in  produc 
ing  machine-made  goods — but  they  have  to  build  their  roads,  drain 
their  marshes,  dam  their  rivers,  build  aqueducts  for  water  supplies, 
and  sewers  for  their  towns  and  cities. 

The  United  States  cannot  afford  to  adhere  to  a  policy  of  isola 
tion  while  other  nations  are  reaching  out  for  the  commerce  of  these 
new  markets.  .  .  .  The  interest  rates  have  greatly  declined 


Imperialism  363 

here  during  the  last  five  years.    New  markets  and  new  ports  must, 
therefore,  be  found  if  surplus  capital  is  to  be  profitably  employed. l 

The  argument  for  foreign  territory  met  vigorous  oppo 
sition.  Prominent  among  its  critics  were  those  who  had  been 
identified  with  the  abolition  of  slavery,  notably  George  S. 
Boutwell,  George  F.  Hoar,  George  F.Edmunds,  Samuel  Bowles, 
John  Sherman,  Charles  Francis  Adams,  and  Carl  Schurz. 
Illustrative  of  the  sentiments  of  these  men  is  the  following  pas 
sage  from  the  Autobiography  of  George  F.  Hoar  upon  the  con 
quest  of  the  Philippines : 

When  I  think  of  my  party,  whose  glory  and  whose  service  to 
Liberty  are  the  guide  of  my  life,  crushing  out  this  people  in  their 
effort  to  establish  a  republic,  and  hear  people  talking  about  giving 
them  good  government  and  that  they  are  better  off  than  they  ever 
were  under  Spain,  I  feel  very  much  as  if  I  had  learned  that  my  father 
or  some  other  honoured  ancestor  had  been  a  slave  trader  in  his  time 
and  had  boasted  that  he  had  introduced  a  new  and  easier  kind  of 
handcuffs  or  fetters  to  be  worn  by  the  slaves  during  the  horrors  of 
the  middle  passage . 

Co-operating  with  this  group  were  Samuel  Gompers,  the 
labour  leader,  Ed  ward  Atkinson,  statistician,  Professor  Sumner, 
David  Starr  Jordan,  President  of  Leland  Stanford  University, 
and  Andrew  Carnegie.  As  an  organ  for  propaganda  the  New 
England  Anti-imperialistic  League  was  formed  at  Boston  in 
1899,  and  about  one  hundred  subsidiary  branches  were  estab 
lished.  A  notable  episode  was  the  exclusion  from  the  mails  by 
the  postmaster  at  San  Francisco  of  three  pamphlets  addressed 
to  members  of  the  Philippine  Commission,  written  by  Edward 
Atkinson.  These  were  entitled  The  Cost  of  a  National  Crime, 
The  Hell  of  War  and  Its  Penalties,  and  Criminal  Aggression; 
By  Whom  Committed.  They  pointed  out  the  cost  of  imperial 
ism,  its  "moral,  physical,  and  social  degradation,"  and  the  re 
sponsibility  of  President  McKinley  for  the  annexation  of  the 
Philippines.  Not  daunted  by  the  action  of  the  government 
Atkinson  promptly  reprinted  the  pamphlets  and  gave  them  a 
wide  circulation  in  his  serial  publication,  The  Anti- Imperialist. 
Other  noteworthy  pamphlets  were  Sumner' s  Conquest  of  the 

1  Economic  Basis  of  Imperialism  in  the  United  States  and  the  Orient. 


364  Political  Writing  Since  1850 

United  States  by  Spain  (1898),  Schurz's  American  Imperialist 
(1899),  and  Hoar's  No  Power  to  Conquer  Foreign  Nations  (1899). 

These  protests  were  ineffectual.  The  triumph  of  the  manu 
facturing  and  commercial  interests  in  shaping  public  policy  was 
well  illustrated  by  two  practical  problems:  Did  the  Consti 
tution  and  the  laws  of  the  United  States  apply  to  conquered 
territory  without  special  legislation  by  Congress?  Was  Con 
gress  bound  by  all  of  the  principles  of  the  Constitution  in 
legislating  for  the  territories?  Regarding  the  first  of  these  the 
policy  of  the  President  was  negative,  and  Congress  took  a  simi 
lar  position  in  regard  to  the  second.  The  issue  involved  was 
the  application  of  tariff  duties  to  goods  coming  from  the  newly 
acquired  territories,  the  beet  sugar  and  other  trade  interests 
opposing  free  competition  and  demanding  the  application  of 
tariff  duties  to  Porto  Rican  and  Philippine  products.  The  posi 
tion  of  the  executive  and  the  legislature  was  upheld  by  the 
Supreme  Court  in  the  celebrated  Insular  Cases,  but  the  reason 
ing  of  the  majority  opinions  was  notoriously  confusing  and  un 
satisfactory  from  the  standpoint  of  constitutional  law. 

Imperialism  did  not  allay  criticism  of  the  existing  order. 
Gradually  public  opinion  concerning  the  scope  and  purpose  of 
government  in  its  relation  to  the  general  welfare  underwent  a 
transformation.  The  view  which  had  long  been  dominant  was 
that  national  prosperity  depended  upon  the  prosperity  of  the 
manufacturing  and  commercial  classes  of  the  country;  when 
they  flourished  the  labourer  would  enjoy  a  "full  dinner  pail," 
the  shopkeeper  a  good  trade,  the  farmers  high  markets,  and 
the  professional  classes  would  collect  their  fees;  consequently 
it  was  only  right  that  such  important  matters  as  the  tariff  and 
monetary  standards  should  be  determined  according  to  the 
ideals  of  the  great  business  interests  of  the  country.  The  new 
view  was  that  the  object  of  legislation  should  be  to  aid  all  citi 
zens  with  no  special  privilege  or  regard  to  any  one  class.  Its 
birth  was  in  the  Granger  movement.  It  was  more  widely  dis 
seminated  by  Populism,  but  its  ablest  presentation  was  by 
William  Jennings  Bryan,  notably  in  his  speech  before  the 
Democratic  Convention  in  Chicago  in  1896: 

You  have  made  the  definition  of  a  business  man  too  limited  in 
its  application.  A  man  who  is  employed  for  wages  is  as  much  a 


Progressivism  365 

business  man  as  his  employer.  The  attorney  in  a  country  town  is  as 
much  a  business  man  as  the  corporation  counsel  in  a  great  metropo 
lis.  The  merchant  at  the  crossroads  store  is  as  much  a  business 
man  as  a  merchant  of  New  York.  The  farmer  who  goes  forth  in  the 
morning  and  toils  all  day — who  begins  in  the  spring  and  toils  all 
summer — and  who,  by  the  application  of  brain  and  muscle  to  the 
natural  resources  of  the  country,  creates  wealth,  is  as  much  a  busi 
ness  man  as  the  man  who  goes  upon  the  Board  of  Trade  and  bets 
upon  the  price  of  grain.  The  miners  who  go  down  a  thousand  feet 
into  the  earth,  or  climb  two  thousand  feet  upon  the  cliffs  and  bring 
forth  from  their  hiding  place  the  precious  metals  to  be  poured  into 
the  channels  of  trade,  are  as  much  business  men  as  the  few  financial 
magnates,  who,  in  a  back  room,  corner  the  money  of  the  world.  We 
come  to  speak  for  this  broader  class  of  business  men. 

This  ideal,  rejected  by  the  dominant  political  parties,  led 
to  a  revolt.  Elaborated  into  a  definite  programme  with  definite 
methods,  it  became  known  as  Progressivism,  possessing  three 
aims:  to  remove  special,  minority,  or  corrupt  influences  in  the 
government  and  to  revise  the  political  machinery ;  to  enlarge  the 
functions  of  government  by  exercising  greater  authority  over 
individual  and  corporate  activities;  and  to  provide  measures 
of  relief  for  the  less  fortunate  citizens.  The  first  triumphs  of  its 
origins  and  conflicts,  in  Wisconsin,  are  well  told  in  Robert  M. 
La  Follette's  Autobiography  (1911)  and  its  definite  programme 
in  the  same  State  in  McCarthy's  The  Wisconsin  Idea  (1912); 
while  progressive  achievements  along  the  Pacific  coast  are  de 
scribed  in  Hichborn's  Story  of  the  California  Legislature  of  IQII 
and  Barnett's  Oregon  Plan.  In  municipal  affairs  the  Progres 
sives  looked  to  stricter  control  of  franchises  and  the  commission 
and  managerial  forms  of  government ;  in  the  literature  of  this 
phase  of  the  movement,  Tom  L.  Johnson's  My  Story  (1913)  is 
pre-eminent.  In  national  government  it  brought  about  stricter 
Federal  control  of  railways,  a  definition  of  restraint  of  trade,  a 
more  democratic  banking  system,  and  efforts  toward  conserva 
tion  of  natural  resources.  Progressivism  was  the  dominant 
issue  in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1912.  Its  arguments  as 
set  forth  at  that  time  may  be  found  in  Theodore  Roosevelt's 
New  Nationalism  and  Woodrow  Wilson's  New  Freedom.  Less 
popular  but  more  profound  presentation  of  its  philosophy  is 
given  in  the  writings  of  Walter  Weyl  and  Herbert  Croly. 


Political  Writing  Since  1850 

Aside  from  its  practical  merits  and  achievements,  Progres- 
sivism  marked  something  of  a  revolution  in  American  political 
ideals.  Representative  government,  as  understood  by  the  old 
schools  of  thought,  was  to  be  replaced  by  direct  government; 
the  supremacy  of  the  judiciary  was  to  be  questioned  if  not  over 
thrown;  the  last  limits  of  government  interference  in  private 
rights  and  property  were  to  be  removed ;  and  with  the  breaking 
of  the  alliance  of  business  interests  with  the  government,  a  new 
type  of  leader  and  public  servant  was  to  appear  upon  the  scene. 
The  World  War,  however,  so  greatly  confused  the  issues  and 
involved  the  policies  of  the  nation  that  at  the  moment  Progres- 
sivism  appears  under  very  different  colours  from  those  it  wore 
even  two  or  three  years  ago,  and  judgment  upon  the  movement 
cannot  safely  be  passed. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

Lincoln 

THE  man  of  many  minds  who  upon  the  surface,  at  least,  is 
variable  is  not  thought  of  ordinarily  as  a  great  leader. 
And  yet  in  some  of  the  greatest  of  men  a  surface  vari 
ableness  has  not  in  the  long  run  prevented  a  consummate 
achievement.  There  is  Caesar,  to  be  pondered  upon  by  all  who 
consider  such  men  second  rate.  And  in  American  history,  there 
is  Lincoln.  His  life  as  man  of  action  brings  this  out  well  enough. 
He  wavered  during  many  years,  hesitating  between  politics  and 
law,  not  drivingly  conscious  of  his  main  bent.  Still  more  clearly 
is  this  brought  out  by  his  personal  life  and  by  those  literary  and 
mystical  phases  that  are  linked  so  intimately  with  the  personal. 
The  changes  of  his  mood  are  at  times  bewildering.  He  is  often 
like  a  wayfarer  passing  through  successive  strata  of  light  and 
darkness,  the  existence  of  which  does  not  seem  to  be  explained 
by  circumstance,  of  whose  causes  neither  he  nor  his  observers 
have  explanation.  Did  they  arise  from  obscure  powers  within? 
Were  they  the  reaction  of  an  ultra-sensitive  nature  to  things 
without  that  most  people  were  not  able  to  perceive?  He  speaks 
of  himself  in  one  of  his  letters  as  superstitious.  Should  the 
word  give  us  a  hint?  Whatever  theory  of  him  shall  eventually 
prevail,  it  is  sure  to  rest  on  this  fact:  he  was  a  shrouded  and  a 
mysterious  character,  a  man  apart,  intensely  reticent,  very 
little  of  whose  inner  life  has  been  opened  to  the  world. 

It  is  significant  that  he  was  not  precocious.  The  touching 
picture,  preserved  in  several  memories — the  lonely,  illiterate  boy 
with  a  passion  for  reading,  indulging  the  passion  at  night  by  a 
cabin  fire — this  picture  has  nothing  of  early  cleverness.  Of  the 
qualities  that  appear  after  his  advent,  it  is  the  moral  not  the 
mental  ones  that  were  clearly  foreshadowed  in  his  youth.  The 

367 


368  Lincoln 

simplicity,  the  kindliness,  the  courage,  the  moderation  of  the 
matured  man  have  their  evident  beginnings  in  the  boy.  His 
purely  mental  characteristics  appeared  so  gradually,  so  unos 
tentatiously,  that  his  neighbours  did  not  note  their  coming. 
Today,  seen  in  the  perspective  of  his  career,  their  approach  is 
more  discernible.  To  one  who  goes  carefully  through  the  twelve 
volumes  of  the  chronological  edition  of  Lincoln's  writings, 
though  the  transition  from  characterlessness  to  individuality 
is  nowhere  sudden,  the  consciousness  of  a  steady  progress  in 
mental  power,  of  a  subtle  evolution  of  the  literary  sense,  is 
unmistakable.  The  revelation  gains  in  celerity  as  one  proceeds. 
But  there  is  no  sunburst,  no  sudden  change  of  direction.  And 
yet,  for  all  the  equivocality  of  the  early  years,  one  ends  by  won 
dering  why  the  process  has  seemed  vague.  It  is  like  that  type 
of  play  whose  secret  is  not  disclosed  until  just  before  the 
curtain  but  which,  once  disclosed,  brings  all  preceding  it  into 
harmony. 

So  of  the  literary  Lincoln.  Looking  back  from  the  few  great 
performances  of  his  fruition,  why  did  we  not  earlier  foresee 
them?  There  are  gleams  all  along  that  now  strike  us  as  the 
careless  hints  of  a  great  unseen  power  that  was  approaching. 
But  why — considering  the  greatness  of  the  final  achievement- 
were  they  no  more  than  gleams? 

Here  is  an  original  literary  artist  who  never  did  any  delib 
erate  literary  work,  who  enriched  English  style  in  spite  of  him 
self  under  pressure  of  circumstances.  His  style  is  but  the  flexi 
bility  with  which  his  expression  follows  the  movements  of  a 
peculiar  mind.  And  as  the  mind  slowly  unfolds,  becomes  over 
cast,  recedes,  advances,  so,  in  the  main,  does  the  style.  The 
usual  symptoms  of  the  literary  impulse  are  all  to  seek.  He  is 
wholly  preoccupied  with  the  thing  behind  the  style.  Again  the 
idea  of  a  nature  shrouded,  withdrawn,  that  dwells  within,  that 
emerges  mysteriously.  His  youth,  indeed,  has  a  scattered,  un- 
emphatic  intimation  of  something  else.  What  might  be  called 
the  juvenilia  of  this  inscrutable  mind  include  some  attempts  at 
verse.  They  have  no  literary  value.  More  significant  than  his 
own  attempts  is  the  fact  that  verse  early  laid  a  strong  hold 
upon  him.  Years  later,  when  the  period  of  his  juvenilia  may 
be  counted  in  the  past,  as  late  as  1846,  in  denying  the  author 
ship  of  a  newspaper  poem  he  added:  "I  would  give  all  I  am 


First  Period  369 

worth  and  go  in  debt  to  be  able  to  write  so  fine  a  piece.'*  Even 
in  the  first  period  of  his  maturity  he  could  still  lapse  into  verse. 
A  visit  to  his  former  home  in  1844  called  forth  two  poems  that 
have  survived.  One  was  a  reverie  in  the  vein  of 

O  Memory !  thou  midway  world 

Twixt  earth  and  Paradise, 
Where  things  decayed  and  loved  ones  lost 

In  dreamy  shadows  rise. 

The  other  was  a  description  of  an  idiot,  long  a  familiar  village 
figure.  Commenting  on  this  poem,  Lincoln  refers  to  his 
" poetizing  mood."  His  official  biographers  tell  us  that  his 
favourite  poets  were  Shakespeare,  Burns,  Byron,  and  Tom 
Hood,  and  add  that  his  taste  was  "rather  morbid."  Byron's 
Dream  was  one  of  his  favourites.  It  is  a  commonplace  that  he 
never  tired  of  the  trivial  stanzas  beginning 

Oh  why  should  the  spirit  of  mortal  be  proud. 

When  his  writings  come  to  be  edited  as  literary  remains— 
not  merely  as  historical  data — the  period  of  his  juvenilia  will 
close  with  the  year  1842.  The  first  period  of  his  maturity  will 
extend  to  the  close  of  his  one  term  in  Congress.  Or,  it  may  be, 
these  two  periods  will  be  run  together.  To  repeat,  there  are  no 
sharp  dividing  lines  across  this  part  of  his  life.  He  was  thirty- 
three  in  1842;  forty  when  he  retired  from  Congress.  Either 
age,  in  such  a  connection,  is  strangely  removed  from  the  pre 
cocious.  In  his  writings  before  the  end  of  his  thirty-third  year 
there  is  nothing  that  would  have  kept  his  name  alive.  However, 
even  as  early  as  twenty- three,  in  an  address  to  the  "People  of 
Sangamon  County"  submitting  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the 
legislature,  Lincoln  revealed  two,  at  least,  of  the  character 
istics  of  his  eventual  style — its  lucidity  and  its  sense  of  rhythm. 
Boy  as  he  was,  he  was  little  touched  by  the  bombastic  rhetori- 
cality  of  his  day.  On  this  side,  from  the  first,  he  had  purity  of 
taste.  His  sense  of  rhythm — faintly  to  be  sure — was  also  begin 
ning  to  assert  itself  in  1832.  Lincoln's  sense  of  rhythm  was  far 
deeper,  far  more  subtle,  than  mere  cadence.  In  time  it  became 
a  marvellous  power  for  arranging  ideas  in  patterns  so  firmly, 
so  clearly,  with  such  unfaltering  disposition  of  emphasis  that 

VOL.  Ill — 24 


Lincoln 


it  is  impossible  to  read  them  into  confusion  —  as  is  so  easy  to  do 
with  the  idea-patterns  of  ordinary  writers.  And  with  this  sense 
of  the  idea-pattern  grew  up  at  last  a  sense  of  cadence  most  del 
icately  and  beautifully  accompanying,  and  reinforcing,  the 
movement  of  the  ideas.  In  1832  there  were  but  gleams  of  all 
this  —  but  genuine  gleams. 

The  ten  years  following,  sterile  from  the  point  of  view  of 
production,  are  none  the  less  to  the  student  of  Lincoln's  mind 
most  important.  As  to  literary  workmanship  in  these  years, 
what  he  did  to  develop  his  power  of  expression  —  in  all  but  the 
vaguest  outline  the  story  is  gone.  That  he  read  insatiably,  that 
he  studied  and  practised  law,  that  he  won  local  fame  as  an  oral 
story-teller  and  as  an  impromptu  debater,  these  details  are 
preserved.  With  these  is  another  tradition  borne  out  by  his 
writing.  He  was  a  constant  reader  of  the  Bible.  This  intro 
duces  the  most  perplexing  question  of  his  inner  life.  What  was 
his  religion?  The  later  Lincoln  —  the  one  to  whom,  perhaps,  we 
get  the  clue  in  these  ten  years  between  twenty-three  and  thirty- 
three  —  is  invariably  thought  of  in  popular  local  tradition  as  a 
man  of  piety.  But  on  this  point  what  do  we  know?  Lincoln 
has  left  us  no  self  revelation.  His  letters,  with  the  exception 
of  one  group,  are  not  intimate.  His  native  taciturnity,  in  this 
respect,  was  unconquerable. 

Though  born  in  a  family  of  Baptists,  he  never  became  a 
member  of  the  Baptist  or  of  any  church.  Except  for  one  amaz 
ing  fragment  he  has  left  no  writings  that  are  not  more  or  less 
obscure  where  they  touch  on  religious  themes.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  in  the  index  to  the  voluminous  official  Lz/e  the  word  reli 
gion  does  not  occur.  As  against  this  singular  negative  evidence 
there  are  anecdotes  of  a  religious  attitude.  But  the  historian 
learns  to  question  the  value  of  all  anecdotes.  Nevertheless  the 
tradition  of  Lincoln's  piety  —  of  his  essentially  religious  nature 
—will  not  down.  A  rooted  tradition,  almost  contemporary,  is 
more  significant  than  anecdotes,  less  susceptible  of  that  constant 
dramatic  heightening  which  makes  the  anecdote  in  retelling 
more  and  more  positive.  Now,  the  traditional  Lincoln  is  a  man 
overshadowed,  a  man  of  infinite  gentleness  whose  pity  seems  to 
be  more  than  mere  friendliness  or  generosity.  His  own  world, 
though  uninformed  as  to  his  specific  beliefs,  persistently  con 
ceived  of  him  as  a  mystic,  as  a  walker  apart  with  God.  For 


Religion  371 

evidence  to  support  this  impression  we  naturally  look  to  his 
intimate  letters.  If  we  may  judge  by  the  surviving  correspond 
ence,  this  man,  of  whose  friendliness  ten  thousand  authentic 
instances  testify,  seems  none  the  less  to  have  lived  and  died 
solitary.  The  one  mitigating  experience  appears  in  his  early 
friendship  for  Joshua  F.  Speed.  Cordial,  trustful,  sympathetic 
he  was  with  many  friends.  The  group  of  letters  written  to 
Speed  in  1842  are  in  a  vein  that  sets  them  apart.  Both  men 
had  suffered  through  their  emotions,  and  each  in  an  analytical, 
self -torturing  way.  Upon  Lincoln  the  sudden  death  of  Ann 
Rutledge,  with  whom  he  thought  himself  in  love  at  twenty- 
three,  is  supposed  to  have  had,  for  the  time  at  least,  a  deeply 
saddening  effect.  A  second  love  affair  was  lukewarm  and  ended 
happily  in  divergence.  The  serious  matter,  his  engagement  to 
Miss  Mary  Todd,  led  to  such  acute  questioning  of  himself, 
such  painful  analysis  of  his  feeling,  such  doubt  of  his  ability  to 
make  her  happy,  that  the  engagement  was  broken  off.  Within 
a  month  he  had  written :  ' '  I  am  now  the  most  miserable  man 
living.  If  what  I  feel  were  equally  distributed  to  the  whole 
human  family,  there  would  not  be  one  cheerful  face  on  earth.  " 
(23  January,  1841.)  Two  years  were  to  elapse  before  the  harm 
was  repaired  and  Lincoln  and  Miss  Todd  married.  Meanwhile 
Speed,  becoming  engaged,  suffered  a  similar  ordeal  of  intro 
spection,  of  pitiless  self-analysis.  He  too  doubted  the  reality 
of  his  feeling,  feared  that  he  would  be  wronging  the  woman  he 
loved  by  marrying  her.  Lincoln's  letters  to  his  unhappy  friend 
are  the  most  intimate  utterances  he  has  left.  Sane,  cheerful,— 
except  for  passing  references  to  his  own  misfortune, — thought 
ful,  they  helped  to  pull  Speed  out  of  the  Slough  of  Despond. 

As  nothing  in  these  letters  has  the  least  hint  of  the  perfunc 
tory  their  reverent  phrases  must  be  accepted  at  face  value. 
That  a  belief  in  God,  even  in  God's  personal  direction  of  human 
affairs,  lies  back  of  these  letters,  is  not  to  be  doubted.  Never 
theless  the  subject  remains  vague.  Lincoln's  approach  to  it  is 
almost  timid.  There  is  no  hint  of  dogma.  But  the  fact  that 
he  here  calls  himself  superstitious  sends  us  back  to  his  earliest 
days,  to  his  formative  environment,  seeking  for  clues  to  the 
religious  life  he  may  have  inherited. 

Loneliness  was  the  all-pervading  characteristic  of  that  life. 
The  pioneer  cabin,  whether  in  Kentucky,  Indiana,  or  Illinois, 


372  Lincoln 

was  an  island  in  a  wilderness.  The  pioneer  village  was  merely  a 
slightly  larger  island.  Both  for  cabin  and  for  village,  the  near 
horizon  encircled  it  with  the  primeval.  This  close  boundary, 
the  shadow  of  the  old  gods,  is  a  mighty,  neglected  factor  in  all 
the  psychological  history  of  the  American  people.  In  the  lives 
of  the  pioneers,  scattered  over  the  lonely  West,  it  is  of  first 
magnitude.  It  bore  in  upon  them  from  every  point  of  the  com 
pass,  the  consciousness  of  a  world  mightier  than  their  own,  the 
world  of  natural  force.  To  a  sensitive,  poetic  spirit,  tempera 
mentally  melancholy,  that  encircling  shadow  must  have  had 
the  effect  of  the  night  on  Browning's  David,  though  without 
producing  the  elation  of  David.  That  the  mysticism  of  the 
primitive  should  have  developed  to  full  strength  in  a  dreamer  of 
these  spiritual  islands,  but  that  it  should  not  have  risen  victo 
rious  out  of  the  primeval  shadow,  is  explicable,  perhaps,  by  two 
things — by  the  extreme  hardness  of  pioneer  life  and  by  the  lack 
of  mental  fecundity  in  these  men  whose  primitive  estate  was  a 
reversion  not  a  development.  While  their  sensibilities  had  re 
covered  the  primitive  emotions,  their  minds,  like  stalled  engines, 
merely  came  to  a  pause.  Except  for  its  emotional  sensing  of  the 
vast  unseen,  the  religious  life  of  the  pioneer  islands  lay  most  of 
the  time  dormant.  It  is  a  fact  of  much  significance  that  the 
Western  pioneers  were  not  accompanied  by  ministers  of  relig 
ion — which  is  one  detail  of  the  wider  fact  that  their  migration 
was  singly,  by  families,  not  communal.  What  a  vast  difference 
between  the  settlement  of  a  colonial  community,  bringing  with 
it  organized  religion,  and  these  isolated,  almost  vagrant,  move 
ments  into  the  West  with  organized  religion  left  behind !  Most 
of  the  time,  in  the  places  where  Lincoln's  boyhood  was  passed, 
there  were  no  public  religious  services.  Periodically  a  circuit- 
rider  appeared.  And  then,  in  a  terrific  prodigality,  the  pent-up 
religious  emotion  burst  forth.  The  student  of  Dionysus  who 
would  glimpse  the  psychology  of  the  wild  women  of  the  Ecsta 
sies,  if  he  is  equal  to  translating  human  nature  through  widely 
differing  externals,  may  get  hints  from  the  religious  passion  of 
the  pioneer  revival.  Conversely,  Dionysus  will  help  him  to 
understand  the  West.  That  there  was  not  much  Christianity 
in  all  this  goes  without  saying.  It  was  older,  simpler,  more 
elemental.  But  it  was  fettered  mentally  in  a  Christian  phrase 
ology.  Out  of  this  contradiction  grew  its  incoherency,  its  mean- 


Religion  373 

inglessness.  With  the  passing  of  one  of  these  seasons  of  storm  - 
ful  ecstasy,  there  was  left  in  its  wake  often  a  great  recharge  of 
natural  piety  but  nothing — or  hardly  anything — of  spiritual 
understanding. 

And  out  of  these  conditions  grew  the  spiritual  life  of  Lincoln. 
He  absorbed  to  the  full  its  one  great  quality,  the  mystical 
consciousness  of  a  world  transcending  the  world  of  matter.  He 
has  no  more  doubt  of  this  than  all  the  other  supreme  men  have 
had,  whether  good  or  bad;  than  Napoleon  with  his  impatient 
gesture  toward  the  stars,  that  night  on  shipboard,  and  his 
words,  "There  must  be  a  God."  But  when  it  comes  to  giving 
form  to  what  he  feels  encompassing  him,  then  Lincoln's  lucid 
mind  asserts  itself,  and  what  has  imposed  on  his  fellow- villagers, 
as  a  formulation,  fades  into  nothing.  And  here  is  revealed  a 
characteristic  that  forms  a  basal  clue.  His  mind  has  no  bent 
toward  this  sort  of  thinking.  Before  the  task  of  formulating 
his  religion  he  stands  quite  powerless.  His  feeling  for  it  is 
closer  than  hands  or  feet.  But  just  what  it  is  that  he  feels  im 
pinging  on  him  from  every  side — even  he  does  not  know.  He 
is  like  a  sensitive  man  who  is  neither  a  scientist  nor  a  poet  in 
the  midst  of  a  night  of  stars.  The  reality  of  his  experience 
gives  him  no  power  either  to  explain  or  to  express  it. 

Long  afterward,  in  one  of  his  most  remarkable  fragments, 
the  reality  of  his  faith,  along  with  the  futility  of  his  religious 
thinking,  is  wonderfully  preserved.  It  was  written  in  Septem 
ber,  1862.  The  previous  February  the  death  of  one  of  his 
children  had  produced  an  emotional  crisis.  For  a  time  he  was 
scarcely  able  to  discharge  his  official  duties.  This  was  followed 
by  renewed  interest  in  religion,  expressing  itself  chiefly  by  con 
stant  reading  of  Scripture.  Whether  any  new  light  came  to  him 
we  do  not  know.  But  in  the  autumn  he  wrote  this : 

The  will  of  God  prevails.  In  great  contests,  each  party  claims 
to  act  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  God.  Both  may  be,  and  one 
must  be  wrong.  God  cannot  be  for  and  against  the  same  thing  at 
the  same  time.  In  the  present  Civil  War  it  is  quite  possible  that 
God's  purpose  is  something  quite  different  from  the  purpose  of 
either  party ;  and  yet  the  human  instrumentalities  working  just  a? 
they  do,  are  the  best  adaptation  to  effect  His  purpose.  I  am  almost 
ready  to  say  that  this  is  probably  true;  that  God  wills  this  contest 
and  wills  that  it  shall  not  end  yet.  By  His  mere  great  power  on  the 


374  Lincoln 

minds  of  the  now  contestants,  He  could  either  have  saved  or  de 
stroyed  the  Union  without  a  human  contest.  Yet  the  contest  be 
gan.  And,  having  begun,  He  could  give  the  final  victory  to  either 
side  any  day.  Yet  the  contest  proceeds. 

Six  months  later  one  of  the  great  pages  of  his  prose  called 
the  nation  to  observe  a  day  of  "national  humiliation,  fasting, 
and  prayer. ' '  That  the  Dionysian  and  circuit-riding  philosophy 
had  made  no  impression  on  his  mind  is  evinced  by  the  silences 
of  this  singular  document.  Not  a  word  upon  victory  over  ene 
mies — eagerly  though,  at  the  moment,  he  was  hoping  for  it — 
but  all  in  the  vein  of  this  question : 

And  insomuch  as  we  know  that  by  His  divine  law  nations,  like 
individuals,  are  subjected  to  punishment  and  chastisement  in  this 
world,  may  we  not  justly  fear  that  the  awful  calamity  of  civil  war 
which  now  desolates  the  land  may  be  a  punishment  inflicted  upon 
us  for  our  presumptuous  sins,  to  the  needful  end  of  our  national 
reformation  as  a  whole  people? 

The  context  shows  that  he  was  not — as  the  abolitionists  wished 
him  to  do — merely  hitting  at  slavery  over  the  Lord's  shoulder. 
The  proclamation  continues  the  fragment.  This  great  mystic, 
pondering  what  is  wrong  with  the  world,  wonders  whether  all 
the  values,  in  God's  eyes,  are  not  different  from  what  they  seem 
to  be  in  the  eyes  of  men.  And  yet  he  goes  on  steadfast  in  the 
immediate  task  as  it  has  been  given  him  to  understand  that 
task.  So  it  was  to  him  always — the  inscrutable  shadow  of  the 
Almighty  for  ever  round  about  him ;  the  understanding  of  His 
ways  for  ever  an  insistent  mystery. 

To  return  to  Lincoln's  thirty-third  year.  Is  it  fanciful  to 
find  a  connection  between  the  way  in  which  his  mysticism  devel 
ops — its  atmospheric,  non-dogmatic  pervasiveness — and  the 
way  in  which  his  style  develops?  Certainly  the  literary  part  of 
him  works  into  all  the  portions  of  his  utterance  with  the  grad- 
ualness  of  the  daylight  through  a  shadowy  wood.  Those  seven 
years  following  1842  show  a  gradual  change;  but  it  is  extremely 
gradual.  And  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  literary  quality,  so  far 
as  there  is  any  during  these  years — for  it  comes  and  goes — is 
never  incisive.  It  is  of  the  whole,  not  of  the  detail.  It  does  not 
appear  as  a  gift  of  phrases.  Rather  it  is  the  slow  unfolding  of 


Humour  375 

those  two  original  characteristics,  taste  and  rhythm.  What  is 
growing  is  the  degree  of  both  things.  The  man  is  becoming 
deeper,  and  as  he  does  so  he  imposes  himself,  in  this  atmospheric 
way,  more  steadily  on  his  language. 

Curiously  enough  it  is  to  this  period  that  his  only  comic 
writings  belong.  Too  much  has  been  said  about  Lincoln's  hu 
mour.  Almost  none  of  it  has  survived.  Apparently  it  was  nei 
ther  better  nor  worse  than  the  typical  American  humour  of  the 
period.  Humorously,  Lincoln  illustrated  as  an  individual  that 
riotous  rebound  which  so  often  distinguishes  the  nature  pre 
dominantly  melancholy;  and  as  a  type,  he  illustrates  the 
American  contentment  with  the  externals  of  humour,  with  bad 
grammar,  buffoonery,  and  ironic  impudence.  His  sure  taste  as 
a  serious  writer  deserts  him  at  times  as  a  reader.  He  shared 
the  illusions  of  his  day  about  Artemus  Ward.  When  he  tried 
to  write  humorously  he  did  somewhat  the  same  sort  of  thing- 
he  was  of  the  school  of  Artemus. 

A  speech  which  he  made  in  Congress,  a  landmark  in  his  de 
velopment,  shows  the  quality  of  his  humour,  and  shows  also  that 
he  was  altogether  a  man  of  his  period,  not  superior  in  many 
small  ways  to  the  standards  of  his  period.  The  Congress  of  the 
United  States  has  never  been  distinguished  for  a  scrupulous  use 
of  its  time;  today,  however,  even  the  worst  of  Congresses 
would  hardly  pervert  its  function,  neglect  business,  and  trans 
form  itself  into  an  electioneering  forum,  with  the  brazenness  of 
the  Congresses  of  the  middle  of  the  last  century.  In  the  spring 
of  1848,  with  Zachary  Taylor  before  the  country  as  the  Whig 
nominee  for  president,  Lincoln  went  the  way  of  all  flesh  polit 
ical,  squandering  the  time  of  the  House  in  a  jocose  electioneering 
speech,  nominally  on  a  point  before  the  House,  really  having  no 
connection  with  it — in  fact,  a  romping  burlesque  of  the  Demo 
cratic  candidate,  Cass.  As  such  things  went  at  that  day,  it  was 
capital.  It  was  better  than  most  such  speeches  because,  grant 
ing  the  commonplace  thing  he  had  set  out  to  do,  Lincoln's 
better  sense  of  language  gave  even  to  his  romp  a  quality  the 
others  did  not  have. 

We  come  now  to  the  year  1849,  to  Lincoln's  fortieth  birth 
day,  and  probably  to  another  obscure  crisis  in  his  career.  For 
thirteen  years  at  least,  politics  had  appeared  to  contain  his 
dominant  ambition.  Amid  bursts  of  melancholy  of  the  most 


376  Lincoln 

intense  sort,  in  spite,  it  would  seem,  of  occasional  fits  of  idle 
ness,  he  seems  in  the  main  to  have  worked  hard;  he  had  made 
headway  both  in  politics  and  in  law ;  he  had  risen  from  grinding 
poverty  to  what  relatively  was  ease.  Now,  he  made  the  sur 
prising  decision  to  abandon  politics.  The  reasons  remain  ob 
scure.  However,  he  carried  his  decision  into  effect.  What  the 
literary  student  might  call  his  second  period  extends  from  his 
abandonment  of  politics  to  his  return,  from  1849  to  1855 — or 
perhaps  through  the  famous  Douglas  controversy  in  1858. 

It  was  a  period  of  slight  literary  production — even  including 
the  speeches  against  Douglas — but  of  increasingly  rapid  liter 
ary  development.  One  curious  detail  perhaps  affords  a  clue 
worth  following  up.  Shortly  after  his  return  from  Congress 
Lincoln,  with  several  other  middle-aged  men,  formed  a  class 
that  met  in  his  law  office  for  the  study  of  German.  Was  this  an 
evidence  that  his  two  years  in  the  East  had  given  him  a  new 
point  of  view?  Was  this  restless  mind,  superficially  changeable, 
sensitive  to  its  surroundings,  was  it  impressed — perhaps  for  the 
moment,  overawed — by  that  Eastern  culture  of  the  mid-cen 
tury,  of  the  time — so  utterly  remote  it  seems  today! — when 
German  was  the  soul's  language  in  New  England?  Lincoln  had 
visited  New  England,  on  a  speech-making  invitation,  as  a  con 
sequence  of  his  romp  against  Cass.  He  was  made  much  of  by 
the  New  England  Whigs — perhaps  for  what  he  was,  perhaps 
as  a  Western  prodigy  uncouth  but  entertaining.  From  New 
England,  and  from  his  two  years  in  Congress,  he  came  home  to 
forsake  politics,  to  apply  himself  with  immense  zeal  to  the  law, 
to  apply  himself  to  the  acquisition  of  culture.  The  latter  pur 
pose  appears  before  long  to  have  burned  itself  out.  There  was 
a  certain  laziness  in  Lincoln  alongside  his  titanic  energy.  It 
would  seem  that  the  question  whether  he  could  keep  steadily 
at  a  thing  depended  not  on  his  own  will  but  on  the  nature  of 
the  task.  With  those  things  that  struck  deep  into  the  parts  of 
him  that  were  permanent  he  was  proof  against  weariness.  But 
with  anything  that  was  grounded  on  the  surface  part  of  him, 
especially  on  his  own  reactions  to  the  moment,  it  was  hit  or 
miss  how  long  he  would  keep  going.  Whatever  it  was  that 
started  him  after  formal  education  in  1849,  it  had  no  result. 
In  the  rapid  development  of  the  next  few  years  his  new-found 
enthusiasm  disappears.  It  is  the  native  Lincoln  moving  still 


Understanding  of  Men  377 

upon  his  original  bent,  though  with  swiftly  increasing  mentality, 
who  goes  steadily  forward  from  the  able  buffoonery  of  the 
speech  against  Cass  to  the  splendid  directness  of  the  speeches 
against  Douglas. 

In  these  years  he  became  a  very  busy  man.  At  their  close 
he  was  one  of  the  leading  lawyers  of  the  state.  Two  things 
grew  upon  him.  The  first  was  his  understanding  of  men,  the 
generality  of  men.  He  always  seemed  to  have  known  men's 
hearts.  This  was  the  gift  of  his  mysticism — the  gift  which 
mysticism  has  often  bestowed  upon  natures  predisposed  to 
kindness.  Almost  inevitably  this  gift  produces  sadness.  Lin 
coln  did  not  form  an  exception.  The  pity  of  men's  burdens, 
the  vision  of  the  tears  of  the  world  falling  for  ever  behind  its 
silences,  was  as  real  in  this  peasant  dreamer  of  our  rude  West 
as  in  that  clerkly  mediaeval  dreamer  whom  Walter  Pater  has 
staged  so  magically  in  the  choir  at  Amiens.  But  the  exquisite 
melancholy  of  the  singer  in  the  high  church  with  its  glorious 
windows  can  easily  slide  down  smooth  reaches  of  artistic  con 
templation  into  egoism.  The  rough,  hard  world  of  the  West, 
having  less  of  refuge  for  the  dreamer,  made  the  descent  less 
likely.  Nevertheless  its  equivalent  was  possible.  To  stifle  com 
passion,  or  to  be  made  unstable  by  compassion,  was  a  possible 
alternative  before  the  rapidly  changing  Lincoln  of  the  early 
years  of  this  period.  What  delivered  him  from  that  alternative, 
what  forced  him  completely  around,  turning  him  permanently 
from  all  the  perils  of  mysticism  while  he  retained  its  great  gift, 
may  well  have  been  his  years  of  hard  work,  not  in  contemplating 
men  but  in  serving  them.  The  law  absorbed  his  compassion; 
it  became  for  him  a  spiritual  enthusiasm.  To  lift  men's  bur 
dens  became  in  his  eyes  its  aim.  The  man  who  serves  is  the 
one  who  comes  to  understand  other  men.  It  is  not  strange, 
having  such  native  equipment  for  the  result,  that  Lincoln 
emerged  from  this  period  all  but  uncannily  sure  in  his  insight 
into  his  fellows. 

The  other  thing  that  grew  upon  him  was  his  power  to  reach 
and  influence  them  through  words.  The  court  room  was  his 
finishing  academy.  The  faculty  that  had  been  with  him  from 
the  start — directness,  freedom  from  rhetoric — was  seized  upon 
in  the  life-and-death-ness  of  the  legal  battle,  and  given  an  edge, 
so  to  speak,  that  was  incomparable.  The  distinction  between 


37  8  Lincoln 

pure  and  applied  art,  like  the  distinction  between  pure  and 
applied  mathematics,  is  never  to  be  forgotten.  Applied  art,  the 
art  that  must  be  kept  in  hand,  steadily  incidental  to  an  ulterior 
purpose,  affords,  in  a  way,  the  sharpest  test  of  artisticality. 
Many  a  mere  writer  who  might  infuse  himself  into  an  imagina 
tive  fantasy  would  fail  miserably  to  infuse  himself  into  a  state 
ment  of  fact.  To  attend  strictly  to  business,  and  yet  to  be 
entirely  individual — this  is  a  thrilling  triumph  of  intellectual 
assimilation.  This  is  what  Lincoln  in  these  years  of  his  second 
period  acquired  the  power  to  do.  When  he  emerges  at  its  close 
in  the  speeches  against  Douglas,  at  last  he  has  his  second  man 
ner,  a  manner  quite  his  own.  It  is  not  his  final  manner,  the  one 
that  was  to  give  him  his  assured  place  in  literature.  However, 
in  a  wonderful  blend  of  simplicity,  directness,  candour,  joined 
with  a  clearness  beyond  praise,  and  a  delightful  cadence,  it  has 
outstripped  every  other  politician  of  the  hour.  And  back  of  its 
words,  subtly  affecting  its  phrases,  echoing  with  the  dreaminess 
of  a  distant  sound  through  all  its  cadences,  is  that  brooding 
sadness  which  was  to  be  with  him  to  the  end. 

Another  period  in  Lincoln's  literary  life  extends  from  his 
return  to  politics  to  the  First  Inaugural.  Of  all  parts  of  his 
personal  experience  it  is  the  most  problematic.  At  its  opening 
there  rises  the  question  why  he  returned  to  politics.  Was  there 
a  crisis  of  some  sort  about  1855  as,  surely,  there  was  about  1849? 
His  official  biographers  are  unsatisfying.  Their  Lincoln  is  exas- 
peratingly  conventional — always  the  saint  and  the  hero,  as 
saint-heroes  were  conceived  by  the  average  American  in  the 
days  when  it  was  a  supreme  virtue  to  be  "self-made."  That 
there  was  some  sort  of  failure  of  courage  in  the  Lincoln  who 
gave  up  politics  in  1849  is  of  course  too  much  for  official  biog 
raphy  to  be  expected  to  consider.  But  it  might  perceive  some 
thing  besides  pure  devotion  to  the  public  weal  in  Lincoln's 
return.  That  this  successful  provincial  lawyer  who  had  made 
a  name  for  conscientiousness  should  be  deeply  stirred  when 
politics  took  a  turn  that  seemed  to  him  wicked,  was  of  course 
quite  what  one  would  expect.  And  yet,  was  the  Lincoln  who 
returned  to  the  political  arena  the  same  who  had  withdrawn 
from  it?  Was  there  not  power  in  him  in  1855  that  was  not  in 
him  in  1849?  May  it  not  be  that  he  had  fled  from  his  ambition 
in  an  excess  of  self -distrust,  just  as  in  his  love  affair  doubt  of 


Second  Period  379 

himself  had  led  him  for  a  time  to  forsake  what  he  most  desired  ? 
And  may  not  the  new  strength  that  had  come  to  him  have 
revived  the  old  ambition,  blended  it  with  his  zeal  for  service, 
and  thus  in  a  less  explicit  way  than  his  biographers  would  have 
us  think,  faced  him  back  toward  politics.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
his  literary  power,  which  took  a  bound  forward  in  the  excite 
ment  following  the  Nebraska  Bill,  holds  itself  at  a  high  level  for 
several  years,  and  then  suddenly  enters  into  eclipse.  Beginning 
with  the  speech  at  Springfield  on  the  Dred  Scott  case,  including 
the  "house  divided"  speech,  the  Douglas  speeches,  and  closing 
with  the  Cooper  Union  speech  in  February,  1860,  there  are  a 
dozen  pieces  of  prose  in  this  second  manner  of  Lincoln's  that 
are  all  masterly.  If  they  had  closed  his  literary  career  we 
should  not,  to  be  sure,  particularly  remember  him  today.  In 
his  writing  as  in  his  statesmanship  it  was  what  he  did  after 
fifty — the  age  he  reached  12  February,  1859 — that  secures  his 
position.  None  the  less  for  surety  of  touch,  for  boldness,  for 
an  austere  serenity  with  no  hint  of  self -distrust,  these  speeches 
have  no  superiors  among  all  his  utterances,  not  even  among  the 
few  supreme  examples  of  his  final  manner.  Reading  these 
speeches  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  this  man  in  other  moods  had 
tasted  the  very  dregs  of  self -distrust,  had  known  the  bitterest 
of  all  fear — that  which  rushes  upon  the  dreamer  from  within, 
that  snatches  him  back  from  his  opportunity  because  he  doubts 
his  ability  to  live  up  to  it. 

The  confident  tone  of  these  speeches  makes  all  the  more 
bewildering  the  sudden  eclipse  in  which  this  period  ends.  The 
observer  who  reaches  this  point  in  Lincoln's  career,  having  pon 
dered  upon  his  previous  hesitation,  naturally  watches  the  year 
1860  with  curious  eyes,  wondering  whether  1841  and  1849  will 
be  repeated,  whether  the  man  of  many  minds  will  waver,  turn 
into  himself,  become  painfully  analytical,  morbidly  fearful,  on 
the  verge  of  a  possible  nomination  for  the  Presidency.  But  the 
doubtfulness  of  the  mystics — who,  like  Du  Maurier's  artists, 
"live  so  many  lives  besides  their  own,  and  die  so  many  deaths 
before  they  die" — is  not  the  same  thing  as  the  timidity  of  the 
man  afraid  of  his  fate.  Hamlet  was  not  a  coward.  The  impres 
sion  which  Lincoln  had  recently  made  upon  the  country  was 
a  true  impression — that  he  was  a  strong  man.  However,  not 
his  policies,  not  his  course  of  action,  had  won  for  Lincoln  his 


38°  Lincoln 

commanding  position  in  his  party  in  1860,  but  his  way  of  saying 
things.  In  every  revolution,  there  is  a  moment  when  the  man 
who  can  phrase  it  can  lead  it.  Witness  Robespierre.  If  the 
phraser  is  only  a  man  of  letters  unable  to  convert  literature 
into  authority,  heaven  help  him.  Again  witness  Robespierre. 
Although  if  we  conclude  that  the  average  American  in  the 
spring  of  1860  was  able  to  read  through  Lincoln's  way  of  hand 
ling  words  deep  enough  into  his  character  to  perceive  his  power 
to  handle  men,  we  impute  to  the  average  American  an  insight 
not  justified  by  history,  yet  that  average  man  was  quite  right 
in  hearing  such  an  accent  in  those  speeches  of  the  second  man 
ner  as  indicated  behind  the  literary  person  a  character  that  was 
void  of  fear — at  least,  of  what  we  mean  by  fear  when  thinking 
of  men  of  action.  That  Lincoln  wanted  the  nomination,  wel 
comed  it,  fought  hard  for  his  election,  only  the  sentimental 
devotees  of  the  saint -hero  object  to  admitting.  Nor  did  his 
boldness  stop  at  that.  Between  the  election  and  New  Year's 
Day,  the  secession  of  South  Carolina  and  the  debates  in  Con 
gress  forced  the  Republicans  to  define  their  policy.  The  Presi 
dent-elect,  of  course,  was  the  determining  factor.  Peace  or  war 
was  the  issue.  There  is  no  greater  boldness  in  American  history 
than  Lincoln's  calm  but  inflexible  insistence  on  conditions  that 
pointed  toward  war.  No  amiable  pacifism,  no  ordinary  dread 
of  an  issue,  animated  the  man  of  the  hour  at  the  close  of  1860. 
Then,  in  the  later  winter,  between  his  determination  of  the 
new  policy  and  his  inauguration,  came  the  eclipse.  All  the 
questions  roused  in  the  past  by  his  seasons  of  shadow,  recur. 
Was  it  superstition  ?  Was  it  mystical  premonition  ?  Was  there 
something  here  akin  to  those  periods  of  intense  gloom  that 
overtook  the  Puritans  of  the  seventeenth  century?  In  a  few 
respects  there  are  points  of  likeness  between  Lincoln  and  Crom 
well.  In  most  respects,  the  two  men  are  widely  dissimilar. 
But  in  their  susceptibility  to  periodic  and  inexplicable  over 
shadowing  they  are  alike.  With  Cromwell,  besides  his  mysti 
cism,  there  was  a  definite,  an  appalling  dogma.  Though  Lincoln 
did  not  carry  the  weight  of  Cromwell's  dogma,  perhaps  the 
essential  thing  was  the  same  in  both — the  overwhelming,  en 
compassing  sense  that,  God  being  just  and  our  Father,  human 
suffering  must  somehow  be  the  consequence  of  our  human  sins. 
Endow  Cromwell  with  Lincoln's  power  of  expression,  and  we 


The  Eve  of  His  Inauguration  381 

can  imagine  him  in  one  of  his  grand  moments  wri  ting  that  piece 
of  superb  humility,  the  Fast  Day  Proclamation.  Again,  was  it 
superstition,  was  it  premonition,  that  created  in  Lincoln,  as  he 
faced  toward  Washington,  a  personal  unhappiness?  No  recol 
lection  of  Lincoln  is  more  singular  than  one  preserved  by  his 
law  partner  with  regard  to  this  period  of  eclipse.  He  tells  of 
Lincoln's  insistence  that  their  sign  should  continue  to  hang  over 
the  office  door ;  of  his  sad  eagerness  to  have  everyone  understand 
that  his  departure  was  not  final ;  of  his  reiteration  that  some  day 
he  would  come  back,  that  his  business  would  be  resumed  in  the 
plain  old  office  just  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 

Lincoln  was  so  absolutely  the  reverse  of  the  rhetorician  that 
when  he  had  nothing  to  say  he  could  not  cover  up  his  emptiness 
with  a  lacquer  of  images.  Never  his  the  florid  vacuousness  of 
the  popular  orators  of  his  day.  When  his  vision  deserted  him, 
his  style  deserted  him.  It  is  confidently  asserted  that  he  never 
was  able  to  press  a  law  case  unless  he  wholly  believed  in  it. 
Strong  evidence  for  the  truth  of  the  tradition  is  the  obedience 
of  his  style  to  the  same  law.  It  behaved  in  this  way,  the  eclipse 
being  still  upon  him,  when  he  was  subjected  to  the  misfortune  of 
having  to  speak  out  of  the  shadow,  in  February,  1861,  on  his 
way  to  the  inauguration.  He  could  not  escape  this  misfortune. 
The  notions  of  the  time  required  the  President-elect  to  talk  all 
the  way  from  his  home  to  the  White  House.  This  group  of 
speeches  forms  an  interlude  in  Lincoln's  development  so  strange 
that  the  most  psychological  biographer  might  well  hesitate  to 
attack  its  problem.  As  statecraft  the  speeches  were  ruinously 
inopportune.  Their  matter  was  a  fatuous  assurance  to  the 
country  that  the  crisis  was  not  really  acute.  As  literature,  his 
utterances  have  little  character.  The  force,  the  courage,  the 
confident  note  of  the  second  manner  had  left  him.  His  partisans 
were  appalled.  One  of  the  most  sincere  among  them  wrote 
angrily  "Lincoln  is  a  Simple  Susan." 

And  then,  lightning-like,  both  as  statecraft  and  as  literature, 
came  the  First  Inaugural.  Richard  was  himself  again.  He  was 
much  more,  he  was  a  new  Richard.  The  final  manner  appeared 
in  the  First  Inaugural.  All  the  confident  qualities  of  the  second 
manner  are  there,  and  with  them  something  else.  Now,  at 
last,  reading  him,  we  are  conscious  of  beauty.  Now  we  see 
what  the  second  manner  lacked.  Keen,  powerful,  full  of  char- 


Lincoln 


acter,  melodious,  impressive,  nevertheless  it  had  not  that 
sublimation  of  all  these,  and  with  that  the  power  to  awaken  the 
imagination  which,  in  argumentative  prose,  is  beauty. 

Lincoln  had  apparently  passed  through  one  of  those  inde 
scribable  inward  experiences  —  always,  it  seems,  accompanied 
by  deep  gloom  —  which  in  mystical  natures  so  often  precede  a 
rebirth  of  the  mind.  Psychology  has  not  yet  analyzed  and 
classified  them.  But  history  is  familiar  with  a  sufficient  number 
to  be  sure  of  their  reality.  From  Saul  agonizing  in  his  tent  to 
Luther  throwing  his  inkpot  at  the  devil  ;  from  Cromwell  wrest 
ling  with  the  Lord  to  Lincoln  striving  to  be  vocal  when  his  mind 
was  dumb  —  in  a  hundred  instances  there  is  the  same  range  of 
phenomena,  the  same  spiritual  night,  the  same  amazing  dawn. 

And  now  the  most  interesting  of  the  literary  questions  con 
cerning  Lincoln  presents  itself.  It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that 
he  was  essentially  non-rhetorical.  He  towers  out  of  the  literary 
murk  of  his  day  through  his  freedom  from  rhetoric.  And 
yet,  pernicious  as  it  is,  mere  rhetoricity  has  its  base  in  genuine 
artistic  impulse.  It  is  art  perverted  and  made  unreal,  just 
as  sentimentality  is  sentiment  perverted  and  made  unreal. 
And  just  as  the  vision  of  conduct  which  sentimentality  per 
ceives  —  and  spoils  —  is  an  essential  to  noble  living,  so  the 
vision  of  word-use  which  rhetoric  perceives  and  spoils  is  es 
sential  to  literature.  Hitherto  Lincoln  had  been  ultra-sensi 
tive  to  the  spoiling  done  by  rhetoricality.  Had  he  been  duly 
sensitive  to  the  vision  which  the  word-jobbers  of  his  day  had 
degraded  to  their  own  measure?  It  may  be  fairly  doubted. 
But  hereafter,  in  the  literary  richness  of  the  final  manner,  no 
one  can  doubt  the  fulness  and  the  range  of  his  vision  as  an  imag 
inative  artificer  in  words.  Had  any  new  influence,  purely 
literary  entered  into  his  life  ?  One  hesitates  to  say,  and  yet  there 
is  the  following  to  consider.  Lincoln  submitted  his  First  Inaug 
ural  to  Seward.  Several  of  Seward's  criticisms  he  accepted. 
But  Seward,  never  doubting  that  he  was  worth  a  dozen  of  the 
President  in  a  literary  way,  did  not  confine  himself  to  criticism. 
He  graciously  submitted  a  wholly  new  paragraph  which  Mr. 
Lincoln  might,  if  he  cared  to,  use  as  peroration.  It  read: 

I  close.  We  are  not,  we  must  not  be,  aliens  or  enemies,  but  fellow 
countrymen  and  brethren.  Although  passion  has  strained  our  bonds 


Third  Period  383 

of  affection  too  hardly,  they  must  not,  I  am  sure  they  will  not,  be 
broken.  The  mystic  chords  which,  proceeding  from  so  many  battle 
fields  and  so  many  patriotic  graves,  pass  through  all  the  hearts  and 
all  hearths  in  this  broad  continent  of  ours,  will  yet  again  harmonize 
in  their  ancient  music  when  breathed  upon  by  the  guardian  angel 
of  the  nation. 

One  of  the  most  precious  pages  in  the  sealed  story  of  Lin 
coln's  inner  life  would  contain  his  reflections  as  he  pondered 
this  paragraph.  Deeply  as  he  knew  the  hearts  of  men,  here — in 
spite  of  its  lack  of  weight — was  something  that  hitherto  he  had 
not  been  able  to  use.  The  power  of  it  in  affecting  men  he  must 
have  understood.  If  it  could  be  brought  within  his  own  instru 
ment,  assimilated  to  his  own  attitude,  a  new  range  would  be 
given  to  his  effectiveness.  Was  he  capable  of  assimilating  it? 
We  do  not  know  how  he  reasoned  in  this  last  artistic  crisis ;  but 
we  do  know  what  he  did.  He  made  Seward's  paragraph  his 
own.  Into  the  graceful  but  not  masterly — the  half-way  rhetor 
ical — words  of  Seward  he  infused  his  own  quality.  He  reorgan 
ized  their  feeble  pattern  by  means  of  his  own  incomparable 
sense  of  rhythm.  The  result  was  the  concluding  paragraph  of 
the  First  Inaugural : 

I  am  loath  to  close.  We  are  not  enemies,  but  friends.  We  must 
not  be  enemies.  Though  passion  may  have  strained,  it  must  not 
break  our  bonds  of  affection.  The  mystic  chords  of  memory,  stretch 
ing  from  every  battlefield  and  every  patriot  grave  to  every  living 
heart  and  hearthstone  all  over  this  broad  land,  will  yet  swell  the 
chorus  of  the  Union  when  again  touched  as  surely  they  will  be,  by 
the  better  angels  of  our  nature. 

The  final  Lincoln,  in  the  literary  sense,  had  arrived.  Though 
an  ultra-delicate  critic  might  find  a  subdivision  of  this  final 
period  in  the  year  1862,  the  point  is  minute  and  hardly  worth 
making.  During  the  four  years  remaining  in  his  life,  his  style 
has  always  the  same  qualities:  flexibility,  directness,  pregnancy, 
wealth.  It  is  always  applied  art,  never  for  an  instant  unfaithful 
to  the  business  in  hand.  Never  for  an  instant  does  it  incrust 
the  business, — as  the  rhetorician  would  do, — nor  ever  overlay 
it  with  decoration.  At  the  same  time  it  contrives  always  to 
compel  the  business  to  transact  itself  in  an  atmosphere  that  is 


3^4  Lincoln 

the  writer's  own  creation;  an  atmosphere  in  which  great 
thoughts  are  enriched  by  golden  lustres,  while  ordinary  thoughts 
bear  themselves  as  do  poor  souls  transfigured,  raised  momen 
tarily  to  a  level  with  the  great  by  a  passionate  vision  of  great 
things. 


CHAPTER    XXIII 

Education 

THE  contribution  of  America  to  education  is  in  the  realm 
of  practical  ideas  and  institutional  organization,  not  in 
that  of  philosophical  theory  or  of  literature.  Even  an 
adequate  literary  expression  of  the  practical  ideals  which  have 
dominated  in  varying  form  from  decade  to  decade,  or  of  the 
institutions  which  sprang  therefrom,  is  rarely  found.  For  the 
most  part  the  literature  has  been  ephemeral,  serving  the  pur 
poses  of  its  own  generation  but  carrying  no  great  message  to 
subsequent  ones;  or  incidental,  forming  but  a  minor  interpo 
lated  part  of  some  other  type  of  literature.  Not  until  our  own 
generation  has  there  arisen  a  philosopher  to  give  vitalizing  ex 
pression  to  the  dominant  progressive  ideas  of  America,  or  scien 
tists  to  apply  in  literary  form  their  instruments  and  methods 
to  the  problems  of  education. 

The  colonists  of  the  seventeenth  century  transplanted  to  a 
virgin  soil  the  old  institutions  of  Europe.  Some,  as  those  of 
the  South  or  of  New  Nether  land,  sought  a  new  home  merely  to 
better  their  economic  condition — not  to  modify  a  social  system 
with  which  they  were  otherwise  well  satisfied.  Some,  chiefly  of 
the  Middle  Colonies,  sought  to  escape  from  persecution  and 
thus  to  preserve  cherished  institutions.  Only  those  of  New 
England  were  beckoned  by  the  vision  of  new  institutions  and 
customs  in  conformity  with  ideals  cherished  in  the  home  land 
but  not  to  be  realized  there. 

Of  the  first  type,  Berkeley,  the  testy  governor  of  Virginia, 
is  the  best  spokesman.  Replying  in  1672  to  the  inquiry  of  the 
home  government  as  to  what  policy  was  pursued  in  the  colony 
regarding  the  religious  training  and  education  of  the  youth 
and  of  the  heathen,  he  wrote :  "The  same  course  that  is  taken  in 

385 


386  Education 

England,  out  of  towns,  every  man  according  to  his  ability  in 
structing  his  children."  This  represents  accurately  the  condi 
tion  of  a  colony  where  the  largest  town  numbered  not  over 
twenty  families,  and  the  total  population,  no  greater  than  that 
of  a  London  parish,  was  scattered  over  a  region  larger  than  all 
England.  While  this  part  of  the  Governor's  reply  is  seldom 
quoted,  the  latter  part  of  it,  probably  inaccurate,  certainly 
misleading,  is  often  given.  It  continues: 

But  I  thank  God  there  are  no  free  schools  or  printing,  and  I 
hope  we  shall  not  have  them  these  hundred  years;  for  learning  has 
brought  disobedience  and  heresy  and  sects  into  the  world  and  print 
ing  has  divulged  them  and  libels  against  the  best  of  governments. 
God  keep  us  from  both. 

Much  of  the  scanty  educational  writings  of  colonial  Virginia 
concerns  the  founding  and  the  early  work  of  its  university, 
William  and  Mary,  founded  in  1693  through  the  efforts  of  the 
Rev.  William  Blair,  a  Scotch  cleric,  the  head  of  the  Established 
Church  in  the  colony.  Of  this  body  of  material,  one  bit  is  of 
more  than  ephemeral  value.  For  when  the  persuasive  Blair 
pleaded  for  the  chartering  and  endowment  of  the  college  by 
the  monarchs  on  the  grounds  that  the  colonists,  as  well  as  the 
people  at  home,  had  souls  to  save,  the  testy  Seymour  replied, 
with  more  force  than  elegance,  "Damn  your  souls!  Make 
tobacco!" 

The  fullest  account  of  Southern  colonial  education,  in  fact 
of  Southern  colonial  life,  is  Hugh  Jones's  Present  State  of  Vir 
ginia  (1724).  He  pays  his  compliments  to  the  prevailing  type 
of  education  in  the  following  description  of  an  important 
educational  custom  of  the  colonial  period : 

As  for  education,  several  are  sent  to  England  for  it,  though  the 
Virginians,  being  naturally  of  good  parts  (as  I  have  already  hinted) 
neither  require  nor  admire  as  much  learning  as  we  do  in  Britain; 
yet  more  would  be  sent  over  were  they  not  afraid  of  the  smallpox, 
which  most  commonly  proves  fatal  to  them.  But  indeed,  when  they 
come  to  England  they  are  generally  put  to  learn  to  persons  that 
know  little  of  their  temper,  who  keep  them  drudging  on  in  what  is 
of  little  use  to  them,  in  pedantic  methods,  too  tedious  for  their 
volatile  genius.  For  grammar  learning,  taught  after  the  common 


The  Middle  Colonies  387 

round-about  way,  is  not  much  beneficial  nor  delightful  to  them;  so 
that  they  are  noted  to  be  more  apt  to  spoil  their  schoolfellows  than 
improve  themselves ;  because  they  are  imprisoned  and  enslaved  to 
what  they  hate  and  think  useless,  and  have  not  peculiar  management 
proper  for  their  humour  and  occasion. 

From  the  harassed  Quakers  of  Penn's  colony  came  a  far  more 
radical  and  forward-looking  statement  of  the  social  theory  of 
education,  as  befitted  those  persecuted  for  their  ideals.  It  is 
obvious,  however,  from  later  records  that  little  more  was  ac 
tually  accomplished  in  Pennsylvania  than  in  the  South.  The 
Frame  of  Government  of  1682,  with  greater  precision  than  any 
other  colonial  document,  required  that  "to  the  end  that  the 
poor  as  well  as  rich  may  be  instructed  in  good  and  commendable 
learning  which  is  to  be  preferred  before  wealth"  all  children 
should  be  instructed  "that  they  may  be  able  at  least  to  read 
the  Scriptures  and  write  by  the  time  they  attain  to  twelve 
years  of  age."  Then  that  there  should  be  neither  failure  to 
provide  the  fundamental  practical  training  nor  failure  to  per 
ceive  the  social  theory  underlying  it,  these  makers  of  society 
add  ' '  and  that  they  [all  children]  be  taught  some  useful  trade 
and  skill,  that  the  poor  may  work  to  live,  and  the  rich  if  they 
become  poor  may  not  want."  But  in  order  to  meet  the  wishes 
of  a  heterogeneous  population,  Pennsylvania  within  a  genera 
tion  adopted  the  policy  of  giving  to  each  religious  sect  the  con 
trol  of  the  education  of  its  own  youth.  This  plan  remained  in 
force  until  near  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Throughout  its  history  the  Dutch  colony  of  New  Nether- 
land  was  little  more  than  the  trading  outpost  of  a  commercial 
company.  The  career  of  the  earliest  schoolmaster  we  learn 
through  the  unsavoury  record  of  the  police  court ;  those  of  his 
successors  through  the  tedious  records  of  the  church,  examining, 
licensing,  and  supervising,  and  through  those  more  sordid 
though  more  human  documents,  the  records  of  the  commercial 
company,  providing,  under  greater  or  less  protest,  the  meagre 
salary. 

It  was  the  colonists  of  New  England,  particularly  those  of 
Massachusetts,  who  had  visions  of  a  new  education  in  a  new 
society  and  who  left  us  abundant  written  records  of  their  pur 
poses  and  achievements.  As  specific  as  the  Pennsylvania  for- 


388  Education 

mulation  and  far  more  effective  was  the  often  quoted  statement 
of  the  Massachusetts  law  of  1647: 

It  being  one  chief  point  of  that  old  deluder,  Satan,  to  keep  men 
from  the  knowledge  of  Scriptures,  as  in  former  times,  by  keeping 
them  in  an  unknown  tongue,  so  in  these  latter  times,  by  persuading 
them  from  the  use  of  tongues  that  so  at  last  the  true  sense  and  mean 
ing  of  the  original  might  be  clouded  by  false  glosses  of  saint-seeming 
deceivers,  that  learning  might  not  be  buried  in  the  graves  of  our 
fathers,  in  church  and  commonwealth,  the  Lord  assisting  our 
endeavours, — it  is  therefore  ordered.  .  .  . 

From  this  law  came  the  establishment  of  schools  in  every 
town,  elementary  schools  only  in  towns  of  fifty  families,  sec 
ondary  or  Latin  grammar  schools  also  in  towns  of  over  one 
hundred  families.  Within  the  century,  through  the  provision 
of  the  law  and  the  experience  of  a  free  people,  these  schools 
became  free.  Consequently  this  statute  of  1647  constitutes 
the  Magna  Charta  of  the  American  public  school  system.  The 
theory  of  education  expounded  may  now  seem  narrow,  but  it 
was  at  least  far  more  concrete,  definite,  and  vitally  connected 
with  the  life  of  the  times  than  the  worn-out  theories  used  by 
later  generations  to  justify  the  same  narrow  linguistic  edu 
cation. 

Specific  literary  education  was  supplemented  by,  or  rather 
was  supplemental  to,  a  broader  social  training  provided  for  by 
a  law  enacted  five  years  previously  which  related  to  the  train 
ing  of  all  children  "in  learning,  labour,  and  other  employments 
which  may  be  profitable  to  the  commonwealth,"  and  provided 
adequate  machinery  to  see  that  its  provisions  were  applied  to 
every  child.  Local  records  of  the  towns  afford  abundant  evi 
dence  that  these  laws  were  carried  out  with  fidelity  throughout 
the  seventeenth  and  most  of  the  eighteenth  centuries.  Educa 
tion  in  handicraft  or  some  form  of  industry  through  the  ap 
prentice  system  constituted,  indeed,  the  most  important  aspect 
of  education  throughout  the  colonial  period ;  and  those  who  are 
content  to  form  their  picture  of  educational  conditions  in  the 
colonies  from  the  laws  or  documents  concerning  the  schools  or 
more  particularly  the  colleges — which  affected  but  the  few — 
overlook  the  most  substantial  and  far-reaching  part  of  the 
educational  system.  Many  legislative  enactments  refer  to  it, 


The  Apprentice  System  389 

though  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  not  actually  necessary  to 
legalize  English  customs  in  English  colonies. 

The  fullest  account  of  the  apprentice  system,  especially  as 
it  was  applied  to  the  adult  labourer,  is  given  in  the  diary  of 
John  Harrower,  a  Scotchman,  who,  having  indentured  himself 
for  some  years  to  pay  for  his  passage,  landed  in  Virginia  in  1 774. 
Like  many  others  he  was  sold  as  a  schoolmaster;  but  unlike 
the  many  known  only  through  newspaper  advertisements,  he 
left  a  long  detailed  record  of  his  experience.  A  good  account  of 
the  apprentice  system  as  a  scheme  of  education  is  found  in  the 
Autobiography  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  Franklin  speaks  of  his 
father's  desire  to  give  him  an  academic  education  and  of  the 
unattractiveness  of  the  Latin  grammar  school.  That  this  dis 
inclination  to  acquire  the  prevailing  literary  education  was  not 
due  to  lack  of  genuine  interest  in  books  is  indicated  by  the 
fact  that  after  other  ventures  the  boy  was  finally  apprenticed 
to  the  printer's  trade  on  account  of  his  "bookish  inclination." 
Custom  and  finally  statute  in  most  of  the  colonies  required  that 
all  such  apprentices  should  be  taught  to  read  and  write,  as  the 
early  Massachusetts  and  Pennsylvania  laws  had  dictated  from 
the  first. 

The  colonial  elementary  school  received  little  attention  in 
written  records  except  in  the  minutes  of  ecclesiastical  bodies 
and  in  town  records.  In  these  references  the  records  of  Massa 
chusetts  towns  are  particularly  rich.  The  town  of  Salem  ordered 
in  1644  "that  a  rate  be  published  on  next  lecture  day  that  such 
as  have  children  to  be  kept  at  school  would  bring  in  their  names 
and  what  they  will  give  for  one  whole  year,  and  also  that  if  any 
poor  body  hath  children,  or  a  child,  that  the  town  will  pay  for  it 
by  rate. ' '  The  first  part  of  this  town  order  indicates  the  method 
by  which  the  earliest  schools  were  generally  supported — that  of 
voluntary  contribution.  The  last  clause  of  the  entry  constitutes 
probably  the  first  instance  in  America  of  legal  provision  for  free 
education  by  state  support.  From  these  conditions  and  within 
a  generation  free  public  education  in  the  Massachusetts  towns 
developed. 

It  was,  however,  the  Latin  grammar  school,  found  in  all  the 
colonies,  that  received  the  greatest  attention,  attaining  at  times 
the  dignity  of  a  newspaper  or  pamphlet  agitation.  Cotton 
Mather  has  left  us  the  petition  which  John  Eliot  offered  repeat- 


390  Education 

edly  at  the  synod  of  churches:  "Lord,  for  schools  everywhere 
amongst  us !  That  our  schools  may  flourish !  That  every  mem 
ber  of  this  assembly  go  home  and  procure  a  good  school  to  be 
encouraged  by  the  town  where  he  lives !  That  before  we  die  we 
may  be  so  happy  as  to  see  a  good  school  encouraged  by  every 
plantation  in  the  country!"  Such  zeal  was  not  an  isolated 
phenomenon  and  could  not  but  bear  fruit.  The  enthusiasm 
of  America  for  education  and  the  great  public  school  system 
of  subsequent  days  are  but  the  legitimate  results  of  such  early 
devotion. 

The  outstanding  figure  in  the  conduct  of  the  Latin  school, 
as  well  as  the  chief  representative  of  the  colonial  schoolmaster, 
is  Ezekiel  Cheever,  who  taught  for  seventy  years,  the  last 
thirty-eight  of  them  as  master  of  the  Boston  Grammar  School. 
Cheever  himself  contributed  little  to  literature  except  a  Latin 
Accidence,  probably  the  earliest  American  school  book,  en 
titled  A  Short  Introduction  to  the  Latin  Tongue  (before  1650). 
This  in  itself  was  no  more  voluminous  than  the  poetic  tribute 
paid  after  his  death  by  one  of  his  pupils,  Cotton  Mather.  With 
better  motive  perhaps  than  metre  he  thus  records  his  esteem: 

A  mighty  tribe  of  well  instructed  youth 
Tell  what  they  owe  to  him  and  tell  with  truth, 
All  the  eight  parts  of  speech  he  taught  to  them 
They  now  employ  to  trumpet  his  esteem. 

Ink  is  too  vile  a  liquor ;  liquid  gold 

Should  fill  the  pen  by  which  such  things  are  told. 

Another  of  Cheever 's  pupils  was  Judge  Sewall,  who  has  left  us 
in  his  diary  some  details  of  the  schooling  of  his  children.  After 
hearing  Mather's  funeral  oration  upon  Cheever,  Sewall  made 
in  this  diary  but  one  brief  entry  about  their  departed  master: 
"He  abominated  periwigs." 

Of  the  other  colonial  schoolmasters  who  contributed  to  lit 
erature  the  German  pedagogue  of  Pennsylvania,  Christopher 
Dock,  has  left  the  most  substantial  literary  product.  Besides 
a  text  or  treatise  he  wrote  an  elaborate  set  of  rules,  one  hundred 
in  number,  which  portray  in  great  detail  the  conduct  of  schools 
of  the  time,  but  which  after  all  reveal  merely  transplanted  Eu 
ropean  customs.  Methods  were  extremely  practical ;  although 


"The  New  England  Primer"  391 

they  indicate  considerable  empirical  knowledge  of  human  na 
ture  they  show  no  scientific  or  philosophical  knowledge  of  edu 
cation.  "When  he  can  say  his  A  B  C's  and  point  out  each  letter 
with  his  index  finger,  he  is  put  into  the  A,  b,  abs.  When  he 
reaches  this  class  his  father  owes  him  a  penny  and  his  mother 
must  fry  him  two  eggs  for  his  diligence."  One  of  the  most 
fundamental  of  modern  educational  principles  is  indeed  recog 
nized:  "Different  children  need  different  treatment."  But 
how  typical  of  the  times  is  the  interpretation,  for  he  goes  on 
to  say:  "That  is  because  the  wickedness  of  youth  exhibits 
itself  in  so  many  ways."  This  most  elaborate  of  colonial  peda 
gogical  works  is  similar  in  form  and  purpose  to  the  numerous 
books  on  behaviour  produced  in  all  European  countries  dur 
ing  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  but  it  has  little 
of  the  penetration  or  urbanity  and  none  of  the  literary  grace 
of  Castiglione  or  of  Chesterfield,  or  of  the  good  Bishop  de  la 
Casa. 

The  most  influential  as  well  as  most  characteristic  textbook 
of  the  colonial  period  was  The  New  England  Primer, r  first  issued 
about  1690  by  a  Boston  printer.  Constructed  on  principles 
borrowed  from  Comenius's  Orbis  P ictus  and  from  the  Protestant 
Tutor,  it  was  used  quite  generally  throughout  the  colonies  and 
universally  in  New  England.  Countless  youth  made  their  way 
through  the  alphabet  from  "In  Adam's  Fall  We  Sinned  All"  to 
"Zaccheus  he  Did  Climb  the  Tree,  Our  Lord  to  See."  To  its 
sombre  interpretation  of  life  was  given  a  touch  of  human  inter 
est  by  the  vivid  description  and  illustrations  of  the  martyrdom 
of  Mr.  John  Rogers  in  the  presence  of  his  wife  and  nine  small 
children  ' '  and  one  at  the  Breast. ' '  This  little  volume,  no  larger 
than  the  palm  of  a  child's  hand,  was  spelling  book,  reader,  and 
text  in  religion,  morals,  and  history.  It  culminated  in  the  short 
er  catechism,  but  no  part  of  it  was  without  its  religious  phase, 
for  the  achievement  in  spelling  extended  to  "abomination"  and 
' '  justification. ' '  From  the  seed  of  this  little  volume  sprang  the 
notable  harvest  of  schoolbooks,  one  of  the  most  practical  as 
well  as  most  substantial  of  American  achievements  in  education. 
A  maturer  companion  piece  to  The  New  England  Primer  was 
Wigglesworth's  The  Day  of  Doom  (1662).  Though  it  was  used 
perhaps  more  for  home  reading  than  for  schools,  few  Puritan 
1  See  also  Book  II,  Chap.  vii. 


392  Education 

children  escaped  the  task  of  memorizing  its  description  of  the 
last  judgment. 1 

More  voluminous  than  the  literature  of  the  lower  schools 
is  that  relating  to  the  colleges.  One  of  the  earliest  literary  pro 
ductions  of  the  colonists,  the  anonymous  New  England's  First 
Fruits  published  in  1643,  gives  a  full  description  of  Harvard 
with  its  charter,  curriculum,  and  rules  governing  student  con 
duct.  It  reflects  the  spirit  of  the  times,  revealing  the  concep 
tion  of  education  and  the  devotion  of  the  people. 

After  God  had  carried  us  safe  to  New  England,  and  we  had 
builded  our  houses,  provided  necessaries  for  our  livelihood,  named 
convenient  places  for  God's  worship  and  settled  the  civil  govern 
ment,  one  of  the  next  things  we  longed  for  and  looked  after  was  to 
advance  learning  and  perpetuate  it  to  posterity,  dreading  to  leave 
an  illiterate  ministry  to  the  churches  when  our  present  ministry 
shall  be  in  the  dust. 

At  the  close  of  the  century  Cotton  Mather  in  his  Magnolia 
gave  an  elaborate  history  of  the  college,  with  accounts  of  its 
later  rules  and  its  chief  dignitaries.  Such  charters  and  codes  of 
rules  are  to  be  found  for  all  the  colonial  colleges.  These  include 
Harvard,  founded  in  1636,  named  two  years  later,  opened  in 
1639,  and  graduating  its  first  class  in  1642;  William  and  Mary, 
founded  in  1693  but  for  a  generation  perhaps  little  more  than  a 
grammar  school;  Yale,  founded  in  1701  but  migratory  for  six 
teen  years;  the  college  of  New  Jersey,  more  popularly  called 
Princeton,  founded  in  1746;  Pennsylvania,  founded  as  an 
academy  by  Franklin  in  1746  but  chartered  as  a  "college,  acad 
emy  and  charitable  school"  in  1756;  King's,  now  Columbia, 
founded  in  1754;  Brown,  founded  in  Rhode  Island  by  the  Bap 
tists  in  1764;  Queen's,  now  Rutgers,  founded  by  the  Dutch 
Reformed  Church  in  1766;  and  Dartmouth,  founded  as  an 
Indian  charity  school  in  1754  and  chartered  as  a  college  in  1785. 
The  first  six  were  the  achievements  of  entire  colonies  in  which 
the  sectarian  motive  was  strong  and  the  early  population  unified 
by  belief.  Two  were  direct  outgrowths  of  religious  sects.  The 
last  was  a  philanthropic  venture.  Benefactors  gave  their  names 
to  three ;  colonies  to  two ;  loyalty  to  reigning  monarchs  to  three ; 
Franklin  was  largely  instrumental  in  the  creation  of  Pennsyl- 

1  See  Book  I,  Chap.  ix. 


Franklin  393 

vania.  Dartmouth  alone  was  ''the  lengthened  shadow  of  a 
man,"  Eleazar  Wheelock. 

Each  institution  developed  a  mass  of  literature,  in  some 
cases  controversial,  but  for  the  most  part  merely  descriptive  or 
apologetic.  With  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  there 
appeared  an  educational  literature  revolutionary  in  character. 
Benjamin  Franklin  was  the  protagonist  of  these  writers,  and 
in  truth  colonial  America's  greatest  educational  leader.  No  one 
more  clearly  portrayed  or  did  more  to  formulate  the  practical 
temper  of  American  education  for  the  half  century  succeeding 
the  achievement  of  political  maturity  as  well  as  for  the  half 
century  preceding.  Through  the  pages  of  Poor  Richard's  Alma 
nac  and  by  his  own  philanthropic  activities  he  instilled  the 
practical  wisdom  of  economy,  industry,  thrift,  virtue,  into  the 
receptive  minds  of  his  fellow  colonists.  He  set  up  models  of 
self-education  in  his  Plan  of  Daily  Examinations  in  Moral 
Virtues  and  in  Father  Abraham's  Speech,  which  was  a  condensa 
tion  of  the  wisdom  of  Poor  Richard.  His  educational  ideals, 
realized  only  fragmentarily  in  his  own  lifetime  but  more  fully 
in  succeeding  generations,  he  formulated  in  his  Proposals  Re 
lating  to  the  Education  of  the  Youth  of  Pennsylvania  and  in  his 
Sketch  of  an  English  School.  The  former  led  ultimately  to  the 
establishment  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

The  scheme  for  an  English  classical  school  or  academy  was 
the  first  effective  revolt  against  the  traditional  education. 
While  this  portion  of  the  school  thrived  not  at  all  and  persisted 
only  under  great  difficulties,  yet  the  idea  survived  and  effected 
reform  in  the  college  from  time  to  time.  The  same  practical 
ideas  appear  in  the  announcement  of  King's  College  in  1754. 
The  first  president  outlined  his  curriculum  as  follows: 

And  lastly,  a  serious,  virtuous,  and  industrious  course  of  life 
being  first  provided  for,  it  is  further  the  design  of  this  college  to  in 
struct  and  perfect  the  youth  in  the  learned  languages,  and  in  the 
arts  of  reasoning  exactly,  of  writing  correctly,  and  speaking  elo 
quently;  and  in  the  arts  of  numbering  and  measuring,  of  surveying 
and  navigation,  of  geography  and  history,  of  husbandry,  com 
merce,  and  government,  and  in  the  knowledge  of  all  nature  in  the 
heavens  above  us,  and  in  the  air,  water,  and  earth  around  us,  and 
the  various  kinds  of  meteors,  stones,  mines  and  minerals,  plants 
and  animals,  and  of  everything  useful  for  the  comfort,  the  conven 


394  Education 

ience,  and  elegance  of  life;  in  the  chief  manufactures  relating  to 
any  of  these  things,  and  finally  to  lead  them  from  the  study  of 
nature  to  the  knowledge  of  themselves  and  of  the  God  of  nature, 
their  duty  to  Him,  themselves  and  one  another  and  everything  that 
can  constitute  to  their  true  happiness,  both  here  and  hereafter. 

Though  this  programme  was  set  forth  by  President  Johnson, 
the  chief  advocate  of  these  views  before  the  public  was  Dr. 
William  Smith,  who  was  largely  instrumental  in  the  founding 
of  King's  and  who  became  the  first  provost  of  Pennsylvania.  In 
1753  he  published  his  College  of  Mirania,  a  Utopian  educational 
scheme  containing  the  ideas  advanced  in  the  curriculum  given 
above  and  in  fact  the  germ  of  a  reformed  higher  education. 
The  underlying  principle  of  Smith's  proposed  reforms  is  one 
which  has  been  repeated  by  educational  innovators  of  many 
generations,  the  realization  of  which  must  be  attained  anew  by 
each  generation.  "The  knowledge  of  what  tends  neither  di 
rectly  nor  indirectly  to  make  better  men  and  better  citizens  is 
but  a  knowledge  of  trifles.  It  is  not  learning  but  a  specious  and 
ingenious  sort  of  idleness."  The  most  revolutionary  part  of  his 
scheme  was  the  proposal  of  a  mechanics'  academy,  as  a  counter 
part  of  the  collegiate  school  for  the  learned  professions.  This 
academy  was  to  formulate  an  education  for  those  "designed  for 
the  mechanic  professions  and  all  the  remaining  people  of  the 
country."  The  essential  features  of  the  curriculum  of  this  type 
of  schools  are  what  in  present  times  we  should  call  the  sciences, 
theoretical  and  applied.  Franklin's  scheme  in  the  English  acad 
emy  was  essentially  the  same. 

But  the  dawning  of  political  revolution  eclipsed  the  rising 
educational  one,  the  new  colleges  fell  back  into  the  easier  ways 
of  the  old,  and  educational  advance  awaited  a  new  nation,  a 
new  century,  and  a  new  vision. 

Problems  of  political  construction,  of  economic  development, 
of  national  expansion  and  protection  thoroughly  absorbed  the 
interests  and  energies  of  the  Americans  for  the  first  half  century 
of  their  national  existence.  Education  was  left  to  individual 
initiative  or  to  quasi-public  philanthropic  interests.  During 
this  period  there  is  no  literature  which  may  be  termed  educa 
tional  except  by  loosest  interpretation,  and  the  references  to 
education  in  such  literature  as  was  produced  are  few. 


Early  National  Legislation  395 

Our  national  constitution,  the  great  political  document  of 
the  era,  does  not  mention  the  subject.  Of  the  sixteen  state  con 
stitutions  adopted  during  the  eighteenth  century,  only  five  treat 
of  it,  and  these,  with  one  exception,  in  the  most  general  manner. 
Thus  it  would  seem  that  our  forefathers  looked  upon  education, 
at  least  of  the  elementary  type,  as  a  matter  of  individual  con 
cern,  or  as  of  local  interest  only.  Two  enactments  of  the  na 
tional  legislature  had  profound  influence  on  the  subsequent 
development  of  education  and  represent  all  that  the  national 
government  did  for  public  education  until  the  Civil  War  period. 
The  third  article  of  the  famous  ordinance  of  1 787  reads :  "  Reli 
gion,  morality,  and  knowledge  being  necessary  to  good  govern 
ment  and  the  happiness  of  mankind,  schools  and  means  of  edu 
cation  shall  be  encouraged."  Two  years  previously,  however, 
Congress  had  passed  the  Land  Ordinance  of  1785  by  which  the 
sixteenth  section  in  each  township  was  set  aside  for  educational 
and  gospel  purposes.  These  two  ordinances,  together  with  sub 
sequent  modifications,  ultimately  gave  as  an  endowment  for 
public  education  a  domain  about  as  large  as  the  Netherlands 
or  Belgium  or  Denmark. 

The  local  legislation  of  this  period  was  chiefly  permissive, 
and  outside  of  New  York  and  New  England  of  little  significance. 
In  these  states  as  elsewhere  legislation  was  directed  to  the  estab 
lishment  of  a  district  system  of  elementary  schools.  Such  a 
system  was  the  expression  in  educational  terms  of  the  most 
extreme  principle  of  democracy.  For  it  gave  to  the  smallest 
unit  which  had  or  could  have  political  organization  and  which 
could  utilize  a  school,  complete  determination  and  control  of 
the  method  of  its  support,  the  length  of  term,  the  character  and 
equipment  of  teachers,  the  curriculum,  and  the  textbooks.  In 
time  this  system  performed  the  great  service  of  educating  the 
American  democracy  to  an  interest  in  education,  a  belief  in 
publicly  supported  schools,  and  an  educated  citizenship.  Yet 
it  also  greatly  limited  that  education  and  retarded  educational 
development  in  other  respects,  in  that  the  poorest  teacher  and 
the  briefest  term  meant  economy  for  the  taxpayer,  as  irregular 
attendance  and  cheap  textbooks  did  for  the  parent;  while  a 
restricted  curriculum  accomplished  the  same  result  for  both 
these  and  the  pupil  as  well.  Such  a  system  was  destructive  of 
professional  interest  and  injurious  to  public  spirit;  but  such  no 


396  Education 

doubt  was  the  necessary  path  to  a  broader  and  freer  education 
if  worked  out  in  the  democratic  way.  This  explains  largely  the 
dearth  of  educational  literature  during  this  period,  or  its  limi 
tation  to  casual  interpolations,  private  letters,  legislative  mat 
ter,  or  advertisement.  One  such  advertisement  contains  in  itself 
a  further  explanation  of  the  indifferent  status  of  education : 

Wanted — a  person  qualified  to  teach  school,  and  as  an  amanu 
ensis  to  write  grammatically  for  the  press  the  composition  of  an  old 
invalid.  He  must  be  a  proper  judge  of  securities  for  cash;  draw 
leases;  make  wills;  and  undertake  the  clerkship  of  a  large  Benefit 
Society,  with  whom  he  must,  by  their  articles,  pray  extempore  and 
give  them  lectures.  He  ought  to  be  able  to  sing  and  play  different 
instruments  of  music,  to  teach  his  pupils  to  dance,  and  to  shave  and 
dress  a  few  gentlemen  in  the  neighborhood.  Bleeding,  drawing  of 
teeth,  and  curing  fire-legs,  agues,  and  chilblains  in  children,  will  be 
considered  as  extra  qualifications. 

During  this  period  communication  was  slow,  travel  most 
difficult,  publication  costly.  As  bespeaks  an  age  of  relative 
leisure,  much  of  the  literature  was  epistolary  in  character.  The 
subject  of  education  often  entered  into  the  correspondence  of 
our  forefathers,  and  sometimes  found  its  way  into  the  public 
press  of  the  day.  But  on  the  whole  the  amount  of  such  writing 
is  surprisingly  small ;  the  interest  in  education  of  the  generation 
that  founded  our  government  and  put  it  into  operation  was 
slight  and  lacking  in  penetration. 

Washington  believed  in  a  national  university  and  wrote 
frequently  on  that  subject.  His  outlook  here,  as  on  other  as 
pects  of  education,  was  that  of  a  Virginian  or  an  English  country 
gentleman — that  educators  were  necessary  but  that  the  means 
to  this  end  were  a  matter  chiefly  of  individual  concern.  John 
Adams  wrote  his  views  into  the  first  state  constitution  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  but  they  were  the  traditional  views  of  colonial 
Massachusetts.  He  also  left  a  diary  or  fragmentary  autobiog 
raphy  which  covers  his  experience  as  a  district  school  teacher, 
without  revealing  more  than  a  passing  interest  in  education. 
James  Madison  held  a  broad  conception  of  education,  expressed 
frequently  in  his  correspondence,  but  not  at  length.  "A  popu 
lar  government,  without  popular  information  or  the  means  of 
acquiring  it,  is  but  a  prologue  to  a  farce  or  a  tragedy  or  perhaps 


Jefferson  397 

both."  Though  probably  the  most  widely  informed  man  of  his 
time,  he  did  little  more  for  education  than  occasionally  to 
express  such  views. 

Of  all  the  national  leaders,  Thomas  Jefferson  alone  took  a 
vital  interest  in  education,  held  broad  and  progressive  views 
upon  the  subject,  laboured  incessantly  for  their  realization,  and 
left  a  literary  record  of  them.  The  two  most  elaborate  presen 
tations  of  these  views  are  in  proposed  laws  or  codes,  one  of  1779, 
the  other  of  1816.  The  first,  a  bill  for  the  general  diffusion  of 
knowledge,  proposed  for  Virginia  a  reproduction  with  elabora 
tions  of  the  essential  features  of  the  New  England  school  system 
which  was  never  realized;  the  second  eventuated  in  the  Uni 
versity  of  Virginia,  the  first  of  the  state  institutions,  now  so 
characteristic  of  America,  to  achieve  material  form.  Much  of 
the  voluminous  correspondence  of  Jefferson  relates  to  these 
projects.  He  wrote  often  to  his  friend  and  political  and  legis 
lative  representative,  George  Cabell,  advancing  arguments, 
answering  objections.  His  correspondence  with  Professor 
Ticknor  of  Harvard,  lately  returned  from  European  universi 
ties,  reveals  his  interest  in  and  knowledge  of  foreign  institutions. 
From  this  source  no  doubt  came  the  innovations  regarding  free 
dom  of  choice  of  studies,  the  divorce  of  these  from  degrees,  the 
lack  of  a  permanent  administrative  head,  the  democratic  gov 
ernment  of  both  students  and  faculties,  and  other  features 
which  made  the  University  of  Virginia  unique  among  American 
universities. 

Jefferson's  influence  on  education  was  local,  not  national. 
Only  one  other  local  or  state  leader  of  this  generation  was  com 
parable  to  Jefferson:  Governor  De  Witt  Clinton  of  New  York. 
Clinton,  an  organizer  and  a  promoter  of  all  movements  for 
social  betterment,  left  numerous  addresses  on  various  phases 
of  the  quasi-public  educational  endeavours  of  his  time.  Sci 
entific  societies,  libraries,  mechanics'  institutes,  hospitals, 
societies  for  the  relief  of  the  poor,  infant  school  societies,  Lan- 
casterian  societies,  all  held  his  interest  and  called  forth  state 
ments  of  his  democratic  views.  These,  together  with  his 
messages  to  the  legislature  commending  educational  reforms, 
constitute  the  most  considerable  body  of  educational  materials 
of  the  times.  It  was  particularly  the  mechanical  and  tempo 
rarily  successful  Lancasterian  system  which  aroused  his  greatest 


398  Education 

enthusiasm.  While  Mayor  of  New  York  City  he  was  instru 
mental  in  organizing  (1805)  the  Free  School  Society  of  which 
he  was  president  until  his  death.  For  thirty-eight  years  this 
society  was  the  sole  public  or  quasi-public  educational  agency 
for  the  children  of  the  metropolis,  and  for  ten  years  longer  it 
continued  a  potent  factor  in  competition  with  the  growing  pub 
lic  school  system.  As  Governor  of  the  state  (1817-22  and 
1824-28)  Clinton  continued  an  ardent  advocate  of  this  system 
through  public  address  and  official  paper. 

The  chief  literary  as  well  as  practical  exponent  of  the  system 
was  John  Griscom  (1774-1852),  a  New  York  Quaker.  In  1819 
he  published  his  observations  on  a  visit  to  European  countries, 
as  A  Year  in  Europe.  In  this  he  records  his  impressions  of  all 
types  of  European  educational,  philanthropic,  and  reformatory 
efforts,  thus  giving  to  his  countrymen  in  this  direction  a  great 
stimulus  to  endeavour.  Of  this  work  Henry  Barnard  later  de 
clared  :  ' '  No  one  volume  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  had  so  wide  an  influence  on  our  educational,  reformatory, 
and  preventive  measures,  directly  and  indirectly,  as  this." 
Gri scorn's  Recollections  gives  an  intimate  account  of  his  serv 
ices  as  teacher,  administrator,  educational  innovator,  and  pub 
lic-spirited  citizen,  covering  a  period  of  more  than  half  a  century. 

The  Lancasterian  system  had  run  its  course  before  the  death 
of  Griscom.  Its  mechanical  scheme  of  organization  made  it 
possible  at  least  to  attempt  the  education  of  children  in  large 
groups.  Lancaster  claimed  that  one  teacher,  by  using  the  older 
pupils  as  monitors,  could  teach  one  thousand  pupils.  This  ideal 
was  beyond  the  reach  of  his  followers,  though  he  himself  is  said 
to  have  demonstrated  its  feasibility.  The  early  New  York 
schoolrooms  were  built  for  five  hundred  pupils.  Economic 
ally  the  scheme  claimed  to  educate  the  child  at  an  expense  of 
one  dollar  a  year.  Thus  it  put  within  the  realm  of  possibility 
the  education  of  all  the  children  of  a  community  on  the  basis 
of  philanthropic  and  later  of  public  support.  To  communities 
not  yet  accustomed  to  taxation  for  police  or  fire  protection,  for 
means  of  communication,  care  of  streets,  or  sanitary  provisions, 
experience  with  the  Lancasterian  plan  was  an  essential  factor 
in  the  evolution  of  schools.  But  the  superficiality  of  the  method 
and  its  meagre  intellectual  results,  its  repressive  disciplinary 
measures,  its  false  conception  of  child  nature,  its  low  moral 


Pestalozzian  Influences  399 

plane  resulting  from  dependence  on  motives  of  reward  and  pun 
ishment,  and  the  formality  of  its  religious  instruction  brought 
about  its  final  rejection. 

Meanwhile  a  European  educational  influence  of  quite  dif 
ferent  character  was  being  exerted  through  literary  channels. 
This  was  the  Pestalozzian  movement  in  Switzerland  and  Ger 
many,  destined  in  later  decades  to  have  a  powerful  effect  on 
American  education.  In  1806  William  McClure,  a  Scotch 
philanthropist  recently  settled  in  Philadelphia,  returned  from 
Paris  whither  he  had  been  sent  as  a  commissioner  to  settle  the 
French  war  claims.  While  there  he  had  gone  on  an  occasion  to 
see  the  great  Emperor,  when  it  had  been  announced  that 
Napoleon  was  to  visit  an  experimental  school  kept  by  one  of  his 
old  soldiers,  Neef  by  name.  Napoleon  rejected  the  Pestaloz 
zian  ideas  urged  on  him  by  Neef,  while  McClure  accepted 
them,  as  did  also  the  Prussian  government. 

Through  various  articles  McClure  was  the  first  to  introduce 
the  Pestalozzian  conception  of  education  into  America;  later  he 
induced  Neef  to  remove  to  America,  and  in  Philadelphia  in  1808 
Neef  issued  his  Plan  and  Method  of  Education,  the  first  distinctly 
pedagogical  work  published  in  the  United  States.  The  work  of 
Neef  in  his  first  school  was  briefly  described  in  later  years  in  the 
memoirs  of  his  most  distinguished  pupil,  Admiral  Farragut. 
Subsequently  McClure  and  Neef  both  joined  in  the  communis 
tic  and  educational  scheme  which  Robert  Owen  established  at 
New  Harmony,  Indiana,  in  1825.  Owen  had  published  in  1813 
his  New  Views  of  Society,  which  was  widely  circulated  in  Amer 
ica  as  a  means  of  educational  and  social  propaganda.  The  sub 
stance  of  this  dissertation  was  delivered  by  invitation  before 
the  American  Congress,  of  which  Owen's  son,  Robert  Dale 
Owen,  was  later  a  member.  The  son  also  issued  his  Outline  of 
the  System  of  Education  at  New  Lanark,  Scotland,  as  a  part  of  the 
American  propaganda.  The  New  Harmony  experiment  was  a 
failure  (1828),  and  the  literary  propaganda  aroused  intense  op 
position  upon  the  part  of  the  conservative  elements  in  American 
society,  particularly  the  religious,  which  then  dominated  the 
traditional  education.  The  general  triumph  of  the  Pestalozzian 
ideas  did  not  come  until  after  the  Civil  War. 

One  great  factor  in  the  secularization  of  American  education 
was  formulated  during  this  early  national  period — the  school 


400  Education 

textbook.  A  second  factor  in  this  process  was  the  change  of 
dominant  profession.  During  the  colonial  period,  in  education 
as  in  social  and  political  life,  this  was  the  ministry.  Immediately 
preceding  and  following  the  Revolutionary  War  leadership  was 
largely  assumed  by  the  legal  profession.  The  practical  bent 
given  to  education  by  such  men  as  Franklin  and  by  the  actual 
conditions  of  American  life  constituted  a  third  factor.  The 
three  together  resulted  during  the  middle  national  period  in  the 
complete  secularization  of  education  at  least  in  the  elementary 
field.  This  change  was  accomplished  in  the  United  States  long 
before  it  came  about  in  any  European  country. 

The  textbooks  of  the  colonial  period  were  almost  exclusively 
religious  in  character  and  content.  From  the  close  of  the 
Revolution  a  distinct  type  of  American  textbook  began  to 
appear.  Political  material  in  the  form  of  orations,  patriotic 
appeals,  and  more  or  less  exaggerated  or  distorted  descriptions 
progressively  replaced  the  sombre  religious  contents  of  the 
earlier  books.  Undoubtedly  the  bombastic  oratory,  exagger 
ated  style  of  speech,  and  rather  flamboyant  views  and  claims 
of  the  American  citizens  of  these  and  succeeding  generations 
were  largely  due  to  this  change.  However,  this  was  one  of  the 
means,  perhaps  a  necessary  one,  by  which  provincialism  vindi 
cated  itself ,  maintained  its  independence  of  "effete"  European 
society,  and  developed  in  time  a  strong  nationalism. 

The  earliest  and  most  influential  of  these  textbook  writers 
was  Noah  Webster  (1758-1843),  whose  fame  as  a  lexicographer 
has  long  outlived  his  fame  as  textbook  writer.  In  explanation 
of  his  work  he  wrote:  "In  1782,  while  the  American  army  was 
lying  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  I  kept  a  classical  school  at 
Goshen,  N.  Y.  The  country  was  impoverished;  intercourse 
with  Great  Britain  was  interrupted,  and  schoolbooks  were 
scarce  and  hardly  attainable."  Accordingly,  in  1783  he  issued 
the  first  part  of  his  Grammatical  Institute  of  the  English  Lan 
guage,  Comprising  an  Easy,  Concise,  and  Systematic  Method  of 
Education  Designed  for  the  Use  of  English  Schools  in  America. 
This  was  a  combination  speller,  reader,  and  grammar,  which 
had  patriotic  as  well  as  educational  aims.  Out  of  it  grew  vari 
ous  modifications,  the  most  noted  of  which  was  The  American 
Speller.  This  is  the  premier  American  textbook,  of  which  more 
than  seventy-five  million  copies  have  been  sold  and  which  still 


Early  Textbooks  401 

has  its  devotees.  In  1806  appeared  his  Compendious  Dictionary 
of  the  English  Language,  which  in  its  school  or  in  its  unabridged 
form  has  ever  since  been  a  familiar  and  popular  work  of 
reference. 

The  only  rival  to  Webster  in  popularity  and  fame  was 
Lindley  Murray  (1745-1826),  a  Quaker  educator  of  New  York 
and  New  Jersey.  In  1795  he  published  his  English  Grammar, 
in  1797  his  English  Reader,  and  in  1804  his  Spelling  Book. 
These,  somewhat  more  scholarly  than  those  of  Webster,  and, 
as  became  an  author  English-born,  somewhat  less  narrowly 
nationalistic,  were  also  extremely  popular,  widely  used,  and 
greatly  influential.  In  1784  Jedidiah  Morse  issued  his  Geog 
raphy  Made  Easy,  the  first  American  text  on  this  subject.  This 
was  followed  in  1789  by  American  Geography,  or  a  View  of  the 
Present  Situation  of  the  United  States,  which  was  even  more  dis 
tinctly  a  means  of  political  and  nationalistic  propaganda.  In 
1797  he  published  his  Elements  of  Geography,  and  in  1814  his 
Universal  Geography.  The  New  and  Complete  System  of  Arith 
metic  by  Nicholas  Pike,  avowedly  a  patriotic  or  nationalistic 
endeavour,  came  from  the  press  in  1788.  In  its  original  form, 
too  bulky  for  simple  school  use,  or  in  numerous  simpler  off 
spring  it  dominated  American  schools  for  half  a  century. 

There  followed  a  deluge  of  school  texts,  as  might  be  expected 
of  an  independent  people  blessed  with  initiative  and  groping 
for  a  democratic  education.  Many  of  these  attempted  the  syn 
thesis  of  the  old  and  the  new.  There  were  those  which  began 
geographical  studies  with  the  exploration  by  Moses  of  the  Red 
Sea;  or  the  study  of  ichthyology  with  Jonah.  Many  still  used 
the  old  catechetical  form.  Most  included  material  of  religious 
character,  some  of  it  in  violently  controversial  form.  Some 
adopted  Biblical  phraseology,  hoping  that  the  form  would  make 
alive,  even  if  the  spirit  were  gone.  All  were  intensely  nation 
alistic. 

In  the  field  of  higher  education,  the  outstanding  change 
during  this  period  was  the  development  of  the  professional 
schools  of  medicine  and  law.  The  creation  of  a  professional 
literature  followed.  The  old  colonial  government  was  super 
seded  by  national  and  state  governments  based  on  written  con 
stitutions,  "a  government  of  law,  not  of  men."  Law  reports 
began  to  appear  in  1789,  with  Kirby's  Connecticut  Reports, 

VOL.  Ill — 126 


4°2  Education 

and  a  book  of  practice  was  published  as  early  as  1802.  Courses 
in  law  were  offered  as  early  as  1773  at  King's,  now  Columbia; 
at  William  and  Mary,  Yale,  and  Princeton  before  1795.  In 
1793  James  Kent  was  appointed  lecturer  in  law  at  Columbia 
and  served  for  three  years.  After  twenty-five  years  at  the  bar 
and  on  the  bench  he  returned  to  the  academic  position  and 
delivered  the  series  of  lectures  which  forms  the  basis  of  Ameri 
can  legal  literature,  his  Commentaries  on  American  Law* 

Medical  education,  like  legal  education,  had  been  given  dur 
ing  the  colonial  period  chiefly  by  the  apprentice  system .  Tran 
sition  from  this  occurred  through  proprietary  schools.  While 
these  schools  persisted  for  the  most  part  until  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  yet  university  affiliation  was  found  as  early 
as  1767  at  King's,  now  Columbia.  More  noted,  however,  was 
the  proprietary  school  in  Philadelphia  from  which  the  patriot 
physician  Benjamin  Rush  laid  the  foundation  of  American 
medical  literature. 

The  literature  of  science  and  philosophy  stimulated  in 
England  and  France  chiefly  through  the  quasi-public  academies 
and  in  the  Teutonic  countries  chiefly  through  state-controlled 
universities,  found  its  chief  encouragement  in  America  through 
privately  organized  societies.  The  earliest  of  these  was  the 
famous  Junto  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  organized  in  1743.  In 
1780  this  developed  into  the  American  Philosophical  Society  at 
Philadelphia.  The  same  year  the  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Sciences  was  organized  at  Boston.  This  institution  was 
chiefly  under  English  influences,  as  the  former  was  under 
French.  Under  the  auspices  of  these  two  organizations  most 
of  the  early  scientific  and  philosophical  publications  of  Ameri 
cans  were  produced.  Much  of  this  literature  was  of  very  prac 
tical  character,  relating  to  agriculture,  climatology,  applied 
sciences,  industry.  Before  1820  eight  or  ten  such  societies  were 
organized.  After  that  period  the  number  of  such  societies  in 
creased  rapidly;  but  with  growth  in  numbers  came  increased 
specialization.  The  development  of  the  natural  sciences 
brought  about  a  less  popular  character  of  publication.  Finally 
the  literature  of  these  societies  became  so  technical  as  to  fall 
out  of  the  field  of  general  educational  literature. 

As  has  been  indicated,  almost  half  a  century  of  national 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  xv. 


Educational  Periodicals  4°3 

life  had  passed  before  the  masses  or  even  the  leaders  came  to 
any  general  realization  of  the  importance  of  public  education 
to  the  new  nation.  During  the  second  half  century  (1825- 
I875),  which  may  be  termed  the  middle  national  period,  educa 
tion  was  nationalized,  democratized,  and  made  free.  This 
necessitated  the  education  of  the  masses  of  the  new  democracy 
to  the  significance  of  education  in  its  political  and  social  bearing ; 
the  conversion  of  the  professional  teacher  to  a  revised  form  of 
schooling  less  aristocratic  in  control,  content,  and  method;  and 
the  persuasion  of  the  hard-headed,  not  to  say  close-fisted,  tax 
payer  that  the  expense  was  a  legitimate  object  of  government, 
not  simply  a  matter  of  individual  inclination  and  ambition. 
Each  was  a  difficult  task,  and  each  produced  its  own  type  of 
literature. 

Periodical  publications  devoted  to  education  made  their  ap 
pearance.  In  1818-19  there  was  published  in  New  York  The 
Academician,  the  first  American  educational  periodical.  Its 
standard  was  high,  its  appeal  was  made  in  no  pettifogging 
spirit : 

O  ye,  whom  science  choose  to  guide 

Her  unpolluted  stream  along, 
Adorn  with  flowers  its  cultured  side 

And  to  its  taste  allure  the  young. 

This  was  followed  by  The  American  Journal  of  Education 
(1826-30),  making  its  appeal  to  the  cultured  classes  and  aiming 
to  inform  them  on  the  subject  of  education  and  to  persuade 
them  of  its  fundamental  importance.  In  the  broadest  social 
sense,  not  in  the  narrow  technical  one,  it  aimed  to  be  educative. 
It  proposed  to  diffuse  enlarged  and  liberal  views  of  education, 
to  lay  emphasis  on  physical  education,  moral  education,  domes 
tic  education,  and  personal  education.  Above  all  it  considered 
the  subject  of  "female  education  to  be  unspeakably  important." 
The  Journal  was  continued  in  The  American  Annals  of  Education 
(1831-39),  the  editors  of  which  were  William  C.  Woodbridge 
and  A.  Bronson  Alcott.  Alcott's  other  contribution  to  educa 
tional  literature,  The  Records  of  a  School,  aroused  to  violent 
reaction  the  conservatives  of  his  time,  for  in  it  were  set  forth 
educational  doctrines  which  were  not  only  radical  after  the  type 
of  Pestalozzi  but  revolutionary  in  the  sense  of  the  "modern 


404  Education 

schools"  of  Ferrer  and  other  more  recent  radicals.  From 
Alcott's  school  Louisa  M.  Alcott  is  said  to  have  chosen  the  char 
acters  for  some  of  her  stories  for  the  young.  The  Journal  and 
the  Annals  were  as  worthy  educational  publications  as  any  that 
we  have  in  our  own  time,  and  appealed  to  the  interests  of  the 
entire  educated  class  instead  of  to  the  teaching  profession, 
which  indeed  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  existed  then. 

Similar  to  these,  in  content  at  least,  was  the  first  educa 
tional  periodical  of  the  Middle  West,  The  Western  Literary 
Magazine  and  Institute  of  Instruction,  published  in  Cincinnati 
(1835-39).  The  quality  of  this  journal  is  a  surprising  comment 
on  the  high  character  of  the  interests  of  the  frontier  region.  Its 
efforts  were  largely  directed  toward  the  development  of  free 
public  schools  and  the  higher  education  of  women. 

These  were  succeeded  by  a  number  of  other  magazines 
whose  interests  were  localized  in  particular  states,  whose  appeal 
was  to  the  teaching  profession  alone,  and  whose  objects  were 
merely  the  development  of  a  particular  school  system  and  of  the 
technique  of  teaching.  By  the  close  of  this  period  practically 
every  state  had  one  or  more  such  publication.  Only  one  of 
these,  the  first  and  the  most  influential,  need  be  mentioned. 
This  was  The  Common  School  Journal  of  Massachusetts,  founded 
and  for  ten  years  edited  by  Horace  Mann.  It  became  the 
channel  of  official  report  and  leadership,  the  source  of  profes 
sional  training  and  stimulation,  and  the  chief  means  by  which 
Mann  carried  on  his  prolonged  struggle  for  the  reform  and  bet 
terment  of  popular  education.  Yet  this  journal,  like  all  of  its 
type,  was  distinctly  below  the  grade  of  the  group  of  magazines 
first  mentioned. 

In  magnitude,  scope,  and  quality,  however,  all  were  out 
classed  by  one  great  publication,  Henry  Barnard's  American 
Journal  of  Education  (1856-82).  No  other  educational  period 
ical  so  voluminous  and  exhaustive  has  issued  from  either  private 
or  public  sources.  It  will  ever  constitute  a  mine  of  information 
concerning  this  and  earlier  periods  in  both  Europe  and  America. 
Through  this  and  his  other  publications,  as  well  as  through  his 
position  as  first  Commissioner  of  Education  at  the  head  of  the 
National  Bureau  (founded  1867),  Barnard  exerted  widespread 
influence  on  the  developing  educational  interests  of  America. 
So  valuable  are  the  volumes  of  this  magazine  that  when  in 


Labour  and  Education  405 

subsequent  years  it  was  proposed  to  destroy  the  plates  from 
which  they  were  printed,  a  private  subscription  by  appreciative 
friends  of  education  in  England  saved  them. 

During  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  decades  of  the  century 
another  class  of  periodicals  disseminated  much  material  on 
education  and  exerted  a  peculiar  influence  on  the  developing 
ideas  of  the  new  democracy.  These  were  the  labour  publications, 
particularly  The  Workingmarf  s  Advocate,  The  Daily  Sentinel, 
and  The  Young  American.  Those  enumerated  were  all  issued 
in  New  York,  but  similar  publications  appeared  in  Boston, 
Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  and  Cincinnati.  The  labour  ele 
ment,  which  during  this  period  came  into  self-consciousness 
and  achieved  organization,  took  greater  interest  in  education 
than  at  any  subsequent  time,  but  was  peculiarly  interested 
in  the  establishment  of  free  public  education  of  democratic 
character. 

The  most  succinct  and  effective  of  the  statements  of  labour 
on  education  is  found  in  a  series  of  six  articles  first  issued  in  1830 
and  republished  subsequently  in  a  number  of  publications.  The 
first  essay  addressed  itself  to  the  question  "What  sort  of  an 
education  is  befitting  a  republic?"  and  answered  "One  that  is 
open  and  free  to  all."  An  education,  such  as  then  prevailed, 
which  shut  the  book  of  knowledge  to  one  and  opened  it  to 
another,  was  undemocratic.  The  second  essay  discussed  the 
source  of  support,  and  asserted  that  it  should  be  "from  the 
Government,"  because  education  was  in  reality  a  form  of  legis 
lation  and  if  wisely  cared  for  might  to  a  great  extent  supersede 
the  necessity  and  save  the  expense  of  criminal  law,  jails,  and 
almshouses.  The  third  essay  considered  the  question  "What 
sort  of  an  education  should  the  people  have?"  and  answered 
"Whatever  is  good  enough  for  human  beings."  The  current 
aristocratic  education  "of  adornment"  was  rejected,  "not 
because  Hebrew  and  velvet  painting  are  good  only  for  the 
rich  and  privileged,  but  only  because  we  think  them  useless  for 
any  one. ' '  The  purpose  of  education  is  to  make  men  ' '  not  frac 
tions  of  human  beings,  sometimes  mere  producing  machines, 
sometimes  mere  consuming  drones,  but  an  integral  republic,  at 
once  the  creators  and  employers  of  industry,  at  once  master  and 
servant,  governor  and  governed."  The  specific  scheme  recom 
mended  was  a  combination  of  industrial  and  agricultural  train- 


4°6  Education 

ing  with  a  more  practical  literary  education  than  that  in  vogue 
at  the  time. 

These  educational  demands  of  labour  were  combined  with 
many  other  calls  for  social  reform.  Some  of  these,  long  since 
attained,  such  as  free  access  to  public  lands,  abolition  of  impris 
onment  for  debt,  adoption  of  general  bankruptcy  laws,  removal 
of  property  qualification  for  voting,  have  an  antiquated  sound 
at  present.  Some,  such  as  abolition  of  monopolies,  shorter 
working  hours,  equal  rights  for  women  with  men  in  all  respects, 
are  still  familiar  slogans ;  some,  such  as  the  abolition  of  all  laws 
for  the  collection  of  debts,  the  housing  of  all  children  in  barracks 
for  educational  purposes,  possess  a  radicalism  which  puts  them 
in  the  realm  of  Utopias,  desired  or  undesired. 

With  the  substantial  achievement  of  free  public  education, 
at  least  in  theory,  by  the  middle  of  the  century,  the  labour  groups 
lost  their  interest  in  education  and  in  large  public  questions  in 
general,  and  transferred  it  to  the  economic  problems  in  which 
they  were  interested. 

During  this  period  America  was  peculiarly  conscious  of  its 
growth  in  national  independence  and  sensitive  as  to  its  provin 
cialism.  This  sensitiveness  was  not  rendered  less  acute  by  the 
comments  of  friendly  visitors  such  as  Miss  Martineau  (Society 
in  America,  1837)  and  Charles  Dickens  (American  Notes,  1842), 
guests  not  inclined  to  "see  Americans  first."  Some  of  these 
foreign  commentators  on  educational  America  were  more  gen 
erous  in  appreciation.  George  Combe,  the  celebrated  phrenol 
ogist,  in  his  three  volumes  of  Notes  on  the  United  States  of 
America  (1841),  makes  frequent  reference  to  educational  affairs 
m  which  he  was  much  interested;  the  Swede,  Siljestrom,  pub 
lished  in  1853  The  Educational  Institutions  oj  the  United  States, 
the  most  elaborate  description  and  most  favourable  commentary 
of  all. 

The  educational  leaders  of  America,  however,  and  to  a  less 
extent  the  educated  public,  were  keenly  alive  to  the  technical 
superiority  of  European  education  and  to  the  value  of  some  of 
the  novel  European  experiments.  The  two  most  important  of 
these  have  been  mentioned.  The  mechanical  English  Lancas- 
terianism  reached  the  zenith  of  its  popularity  before  the  middle 
of  the  century  and  disappeared  before  the  close  of  this  middle 
national  period.  The  Swiss  Pestalozzianism,  especially  in  its 


Practical  Education  4°7 

systematized  German  form,  greatly  increased  in  influence. 
Because  of  its  liberal  and  more  accurate  interpretation  of  human 
nature,  its  kindly  sentiment,  its  democratic  bearing,  and  the 
social  significance  which  it  gave  to  education,  it  fitted  into  the 
American  environment.  School  method  was  greatly  modified 
and  in  time  shaped  by  a  more  psychologically  accurate  inter 
pretation  of  the  child  mind,  as  school  management  was  by  a 
more  human  conception  of  the  educational  process.  Both 
Lancasterianism  and  Pestalozzianism  occasioned  a  mass  of 
publications,  in  pamphlets,  newspapers,  periodicals,  books,  and 
special  reports.  The  infant  school,  borrowed  from  England, 
though  it  had  a  briefer  vogue  than  Lancasterianism,  contributed 
to  the  development  of  our  primary  schools. 

The  Fellenberg  experiment  in  Switzerland  (1809-44)  ex~ 
erted,  according  to  Barnard,  a  greater  influence  in  America  than 
any  other  single  educational  institution  ever  did.  Its  funda 
mental  idea  was  the  unifying  of  an  academic  and  a  practical 
industrial  or  agricultural  education  as  this  union  is  now  achieved 
by  such  an  institution  as  Hampton.  Scarcely  an  American  col 
lege  and  few  academies  founded  between  1825  and  the  middle 
of  the  century  but  sought  to  embody  this  idea.  Consequently 
early  collegiate  literature  is  saturated  with  this  suggestion. 
Suggestion  only,  however,  it  proved  to  be,  for  few  followed  the 
experiment  long  and  none  actually  understood  the  fundamental 
educational  principles  involved.  The  plan  commended  itself 
to  provincial  America,  since  it  made  collegiate  education  feas 
ible  to  many  to  whom  it  were  otherwise  impossible  because  of 
financial  limitations.  It  met  with  approval  also  because  it  pro 
moted  the  physical  health  so  much  needed  by  students  who 
were  yet  living  under  the  ideals  of  a  religious  asceticism  tem 
pered  only  by  occasional  relapse.  There  were  good  souls  who 
justified  this  type  of  education  by  recalling  that  Samson  was  a 
man  of  strength,  David  was  ruddy  of  countenance,  and  that 
Moses  must  have  been  of  strong  physique  to  judge  by  certain 
incidents  in  his  early  manhood. 

European  endeavour  and  achievement  in  education  became 
the  subject  of  much  study  by  American  educators  and  occa 
sioned  a  few  outstanding  reports.  Some  of  these  reports  were 
personal  only,  as  that  on  the  Fellenberg  plan  (1831-32)  by 
William  C.  Woodbridge,  who  taught  for  a  year  in  the  parent 


4°8  Education 

institution.  Others  were  official,  as  that  made  by  Professor 
Calvin  E.  Stowe  on  the  Prussian  school  system  to  the  Ohio 
legislature  in  1837.  This  brief  volume,  admirable  in  concise 
ness,  temper,  and  insight,  had  wide  influence  and  was  repub- 
lished  by  many  state  legislatures.  So  also  was  the  report  of  the 
French  philosopher  Cousin,  On  the  State  of  Public  Instruction 
in  Germany,  Particularly  in  Prussia  (1831).  This,  indeed, 
because  of  its  wide  influence  came  to  be  considered  a  part  of 
American  educational  literature. 

More  ponderous  and  less  influential  was  the  exhaustive  re 
port  of  Alexander  Dallas  Bache  (1839),  the  first  president  of 
Girard  College.  Authorized  by  the  trustees  to  gather  informa 
tion  concerning  the  education  of  orphans,  he  included  an  elab 
orate  study  of  school  systems  of  most  European  countries.  The 
influence  of  all  these  reports  was  focussed  by  Horace  Mann  in 
his  Seventh  Annual  Report  (1844)  as  Secretary  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  Board  of  Education. 

Mann  was  an  ardent  patriot,  an  experienced  politician  and 
public  administrator,  a  keen  observer,  an  energetic  reformer, 
and  the  wielder  of  a  trenchant  pen.  His  forceful  statement  was 
followed  up  by  yet  more  forceful  practical  endeavour.  The  abo 
lition  of  corporal  punishment,  the  introduction  of  an  enriched 
curriculum,  the  training  of  teachers,  the  adoption  of  methods 
based  on  a  scientific  knowledge  of  the  human  mind,  the  proper 
classification  of  school  children,  the  elaboration  of  the  public 
school  system  to  include  many  if  not  all  of  the  quasi-public 
organizations  so  numerous  in  America — these  were  his  de 
mands.  The  effect  of  all  of  the  efforts  to  borrow  lessons  from 
European,  particularly  German,  experience  was  thoroughly  in 
evidence. 

One  other  of  these  observers  of  European  experiment  has 
already  been  mentioned, — Henry  Barnard  (1811-1900), — the 
record  of  whose  observations  exceeds  in  bulk  the  work  of  all 
the  others.  In  1852  Barnard  issued  a  volume  of  School  Archi 
tecture  placing  that  phase  of  educational  activity  on  the  most 
advanced  plane,  where  it  has  since  been  maintained.  In  1851 
he  published  an  extensive  volume  on  Normal  Schools,  and 
in  1854  one  on  National  Education.  These  activities  were 
continued  in  the  serial  publication  of  the  American  Journal  oj 
Education. 


Official  Reports  409 

Horace  Mann's  activities  were  directed  pointedly  against 
local  evils  and  produced  violent  reaction.  The  controversy  in 
magazine  and  newspaper  was  prolonged  and  became  of  national 
interest.  So  it  happened  that  the  great  educational  reforms  of 
the  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth  decades  of  the  century,  in  which 
Barnard  and  many  others  laboured  no  less  effectively  than 
Mann,  became  generally  connected  with  Mann's  name 

In  this  period  official  educational  reports  appeared  in  great 
quantities.  Such  documents  actually  began  as  early  as  1789 
with  the  Reports  of  the  Regents  of  the  State  of  New  York 
to  the  legislature.  This  series,  still  continued,  gives  us  the 
longest  survey  of  education  to  be  found  in  state  or  nation. 
Reports  of  state  superintendents  of  education  began  with  the 
establishment  of  such  an  office  in  the  State  of  New  York  in  1 812. 
These  two  series  were  the  only  ones,  however,  before  the  ap 
pointment  of  Mann  in  Massachusetts  in  1837  and  of  Barnard 
in  Connecticut  in  1838.  The  reports  of  Horace  Mann  are  to 
this  day  outstanding  documents  and  reveal  in  detail  the  accom 
plishments  as  well  as  the  needs  of  education  in  his  time.  Others 
of  importance  were  those  of  Lewis  of  Ohio,  Pierce  of  Michigan, 
and  Gilman  of  Connecticut,  later  the  first  president  of  Johns 
Hopkins  University.  While  none  of  these  documentary  reports 
possess  the  literary  quality  of  those  of  Mann  and  Barnard,  and 
perhaps  gain  their  classification  as  literature  merely  because 
they  appear  in  print  and  cumber  the  shelves  of  our  libraries, 
yet  in  them  one  can  discover  the  educational  achievements  and 
aspirations  of  the  period. 

Technical  professional  literature  began  to  appear  towards 
the  middle  of  the  century,  with  the  founding  of  the  normal 
schools.  Omitting  the  short  production  of  Neef,  the  earliest 
and  undoubtedly  the  most  popular  and  influential  through  all 
of  this  period  was  The  Theory  and  Practice  of  Teaching  (1847) 
by  David  T.  Page,  principal  of  the  first  New  York  normal 
school. 

Popular  educational  discussion  was  largely  if  not  wholly 
directed  to  the  question  of  free  public  schools  as  opposed  to  the 
traditional  private,  church,  or  quasi-public  schools  supported 
by  tuition  fees  or  rates.  It  is  difficult  for  Americans  of  the  pres 
ent  generation  to  realize  that  little  more  than  half  a  century 
ago  free  public  schools  were  frequently  attacked  as  having 


410  Education 

dangerous  socialistic  tendencies,  as  being  atheistic,  or  as  devices 
of  the  evil  one.  Even  political  radicals  could  resolve  "that  all 
compulsory  school  establishments  are  as  oppressive  as  church 
establishments  and  no  reasoning,  no  arguments,  can  be  offered 
in  support  of  the  former  which  are  not  equally  applicable  to 
the  latter."  The  conservatives,  represented  by  the  most  influ 
ential  National  Gazette  (1830),  argued:  "It  is  our  strong  incli 
nation  and  our  obvious  interest  that  literary  education  should 
be  universal;  but  we  should  be  guilty  of  imposture  if  we  pro 
fessed  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of  that  consummation  .... 
The  'peasant '  must  labour  during  those  hours  of  the  day  which 
his  wealthy  neighbour  can  give  to  the  abstract  culture  of  the 
mind."  The  ecclesiastical  representative  arguing  for  the  repeal 
of  the  free  school  act  in  New  York  (1850)  claimed  that  "it 
will  at  least  give  us  hope  that  if  the  people  of  the  State  shall  be 
delivered  from  this  odious  act,  the  people  of  this  city  will  soon 
follow  in  demanding  freedom  from  schools  that  are  a  moral 
nuisance,  and  have  no  kind  of  claim  upon  the  confidence  of  the 
public. ' '  The  views  of  the  aristocratic  class  may  be  represented 
in  a  sentence  or  two  from  John  C.  Calhoun  (1834) : 

The  poor  and  uneducated  are  increasing;  there  is  no  power  in  a 
republican  government  to  repress  them;  the  number  and  disor 
derly  tempers  will  make  them  the  efficient  enemies  and  the  ruin  of 
property  ....  Education  will  do  nothing  for  them;  they  will 
not  give  it  to  their  children ;  it  will  do  them  no  good  if  you  do.  ... 
Slavery  is  indispensable  to  a  republican  government. 

To  counteract  and  destroy  such  views  was  not  an  easy  or  a 
brief  task.  The  controversy  was  prolonged  through  years  of 
public  discussion  and  debate.  The  most  important  of  the  argu 
ments  for  the  free  school  which  found  permanent  form  were  the 
Essays  on  Popular  Education  (1824)  by  James  T.  Carter  of 
Massachusetts;  the  address  of  Thaddeus  Stevens  on  Free 
Schools  vs.  Charity  or  Pauper  Schools  before  the  legislature  of 
Pennsylvania  in  1835 ;  the  Tenth  Annual  Report  of  Horace  Mann 
in  1846;  and  finally  the  address  of  James  A.  Garfield,  then  con 
gressman,  later  President,  on  the  establishment  of  a  national 
bureau  of  education  in  1867.  Surprising  as  it  now  seems,  the 
controversy  terminated  only  after  the  Civil  War.  The  free 


Education  for  Women  411 

school  system  was  not  finally  established  in  New  York  until 
1867,  in  New  Jersey  until  1869;  in  actual  practice  it  was  not  in 
operation  in  a  number  of  the  Middle  Western  states  until  after 
1870,  and  in  some  of  the  Southern  states  a  decade  or  so  later. 

As  The  Journal  of  Education  said,  during  this  period  the 
problem  of  "female  education"  was  "unspeakably  important." 
In  the  successful  agitation  of  that  subject  America  made 
one  of  her  great  contributions  to  education.  Undoubtedly 
the  prevalent  view  was  that  "education  renders  females  less 
contented  with  the  lot  assigned  them  by  God  and  by  the 
customs  of  society;  that  it  tends  to  withdraw  them  from  their 
appropriate  domestic  duties,  and  thus  make  them  less  happy 
and  less  useful."  The  first  effective  protest  against  this  view 
was  made  by  Mrs.  Emma  Hart  Willard  (1787-1870).  After  a 
teaching  experience  which  began  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  she 
drew  up  in  1816  an  Address  to  the  Public,  Particularly  to  the 
Legislature  of  New  York,  Proposing  a  Plan  for  Improving  Fe 
male  Education.  At  the  urgent  advice  of  Governor  Clinton  the 
legislature  voted  (1819)  that  the  academy  which  Mrs.  Wil 
lard  had  founded  should  be  entitled  to  share  in  the  state 
funds.  Though  these  funds  were  probably  never  granted  by 
the  regents  and  consequently  never  became  available,  the 
institution  has  the  credit  of  being  the  first  institution,  in 
America  at  least,  for  the  higher  education  of  women  to  which 
state  aid  was  voted.  Mrs.  Willard  wrote  many  textbooks  and 
was  credited  by  her  generation  with  opening  to  women  the 
"masculine  subjects"  of  mathematics  and  the  descriptive 
sciences. 

The  pioneer  work  of  Mrs.  Willard  in  founding  the  Troy 
Academy  was  followed  by  that  of  Mary  Lyon  in  the  founding 
of  Mount  Holyoke  Seminary  (1837).  Miss  Lyon's  one  contri 
bution  to  literature,  aside  from  the  circular  of  the  institution, 
was  Female  Education  (1839),  which  was  but  an  enlarged  pro 
spectus  of  the  Seminary  and  a  defence  of  the  type  of  education 
then  offered  to  girls.  By  a  narrow  margin  the  institution  es 
caped  being  labelled  "The  Pangynaikean  Seminary,"  and  by  a 
margin  quite  as  narrow  did  the  education  offered  vary  from  the 
traditional  formal  education  of  young  men.  The  tendency  to 
make  women's  newly  won  privilege  a  mere  copy  of  the  formal 
education  offered  to  men  is  revealed  in  a  yet  more  extreme  form 


412  Education 

in  the  next  step,  the  establishment  of  the  first  women's  college, 
Vassar,  in  1861.  Nevertheless  the  literary  documents  produced 
by  these  foundations  are  far  more  radical  than  the  views  preva 
lent  and  reveal  a  greater  independence  of  thought  than  do  the 
institutions  in  their  practice. 

The  literary  discussions  called  forth  by  this  subject  during 
this  entire  period  while  voluminous  in  quantity  have  only 
historical  interest;  nor  had  the  cause  any  advocates  who  can 
compare  in  literary  skill  or  influence  with  Hannah  More  or 
Maria  Edgeworth. 

In  the  field  of  higher  education  the  middle  half-century 
was  one  of  great  activity  and  advance.  The  Dartmouth  Col 
lege  Case  by  its  decision  (1819)  that  the  state  could  have  no 
part  in  determining  the  character  or  activities  of  denomina 
tional  institutions  once  chartered,  stimulated  both  secular  au 
thorities  and  sectarian  religious  interests  to  renewed  activity  in 
fostering  such  institutions.  Beginning  with  the  University  of 
Virginia,  opened  in  1824,  and  led  particularly  by  the  University 
of  Michigan,  opened  in  1841,  such  secular  institutions  multi 
plied  and  flourished.  Similar  to  these  were  Wisconsin,  1848, 
Minnesota,  1864,  Illinois,  1867,  California,  1873 — to  name  only 
the  largest  and  most  widely  known  of  the  state  universities ;  and 
of  privately  endowed  institutions,  the  Johns  Hopkins  Univer 
sity,  1876,  and  Leland  Stanford,  Jr.,  University,  1891.  In  the 
case  of  denominational  foundations  the  situation  was  similar. 
While  eleven  colleges  were  established  previous  to  the  Revo 
lution  and  thirty-four  in  the  following  half  century,  no  less 
than  285  such  institutions,  of  acknowledged  standing  and  still 
in  existence,  originated  during  the  middle  half-century.  The 
University  of  Chicago,  established  in  1892,  is  the  most  famous. 

Each  institution  produced  certain  literary  efforts  in  the  form 
of  propaganda,  report,  and  product.  Undergraduate  journalism 
originated  and  flourished.  Sectarian  propaganda  was  stimu 
lated.  College  officials  in  time  ceased  to  regard  student  instruc 
tion  and  discipline  as  their  only  function  and  began  to  attend 
to  larger  and  more  impersonal  educational  problems.  The  two 
most  important  products  of  these  new  interests  were  reports, 
one  by  the  faculty  of  Amherst  College  in  1827,  the  other  by  the 
faculty  of  Yale  College  in  1829.  It  is  an  indication  either  of 
the  progessiveness  of  that  period  or  of  the  non-progressiveness 


College  Problems  4*3 

of  the  century  intervening  between  then  and  now,  or  perhaps 
of  the  traditional  character  of  educational  ideas  in  general,  that 
the  problems  discussed  in  these  pamphlets  are  much  the  same 
as  those  of  the  present  day,  and  that  the  arguments  then  of 
fered  differ  but  little  from  those  now  heard.  A  paragraph  from 
the  Amherst  report  states  the  problem  clearly: 

Why,  it  is  demanded,  such  reluctance  to  admit  modern  improve 
ments  and  modern  literature  ?  Why  so  little  attention  to  the  natural, 
civil,  and  political  history  of  our  own  country  and  to  the  genius  of 
our  government  ?  Why  so  little  regard  to  the  French  and  Spanish 
languages,  especially  considering  the  commercial  relations  which  are 
now  so  rapidly  forming,  and  which  bid  fair  to  be  indefinitely  extend 
ed  between  the  United  States  and  all  the  great  Southern  republics  ? 
Why  should  my  son,  who  is  to  be  a  merchant  at  home,  or  an  agent 
in  some  foreign  port;  or  why,  if  he  is  to  inherit  my  fortune,  and 
wishes  to  qualify  himself  for  the  duties  and  standing  of  a  private 
gentleman,  or  a  scientific  farmer — why,  in  either  case,  should  he  be 
compelled  to  spend  nearly  four  years  out  of  six  in  the  study  of  the 
dead  languages,  for  which  he  has  no  taste,  from  which  he  expects 
to  derive  no  material  advantage,  and  for  which  he  will  in  fact  have 
but  very  little  use  after  his  senior  examination  ? 

This  quotation  indicates  the  tenor  of  the  Amherst  reply;  it  was 
favourable  to  a  progressive,  even  radical,  solution.  On  the  other 
hand  the  very  elaborate  "^ale  discussion  of  the  same  subject, 
the  product  of  prolonged  faculty  deliberation,  is  the  fullest 
statement  of  the  traditional  "disciplinary"  view  of  collegiate 
education. 

The  best  literary  presentation  of  the  period  of  conflict  is 
President  Wayland's  Thoughts  on  the  Present  Collegiate  System 
in  the  United  States  (1842).  This  discussion,  as  also  President 
Wayland's  various  annual  reports,  emphasized  the  need  of 
radical  reform  in  the  collegiate  system. 

The  middle  decades  of  the  century  were  characterized  by 
the  prominence  of  a  few  influential  college  presidents  whose  per 
sonality  dominated  the  period  and  whose  writings  and  official 
reports  gave  character  to  the  literature  relating  to  higher  edu 
cation.  Among  these  were  Eliphalet  Nott  (1804-66)  of  Union, 
Francis  Wayland  (1827-55)  of  Brown,  Mark  Hopkins  (1836-72) 
of  Williams,  Frederick  A.  P.  Barnard  (1864-89)  of  Columbia. 
Nott  for  more  than  half  a  century  gave  his  impress  to  the  in- 


4X4  Education 

dependent  non-sectarian  type  of  institution ;  Wayland  directed 
the  transformation  of  a  small  denominational  college  into  an 
institution  with  broad  outlook,  efficiently  serving  the  whole 
community;  Hopkins1  represents  the  entire  conception  of  col 
legiate  education  as  the  moulding  of  the  character  of  youth,  as 
witnessed  by  the  proverbial  collegiate  log  with  Hopkins  at  one 
end  and  the  future  President,  Garfield,  at  the  other;  Barnard 
first  caught  the  vision  of  the  future  university,  growing  out  of 
the  traditional  college,  and  led  the  way  to  the  threshold  of  a 
new  day.  Whether  the  curriculum  should  be  reformed  by  the 
introduction  of  modern  subjects;  whether  there  should  be  a 
choice  of  these,  when  introduced,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  tradi 
tional  classics;  whether  technical  subjects,  preparatory  to  the 
new  professions  of  engineering,  medicine,  industry,  and  business 
should  find  a  place — these  became  the  subjects  of  continued 
discussion.  The  sectarian  and  hortatory  discussions  which  pre 
vailed  before  the  Civil  War  gave  way  rather  definitely  after 
that  conflict  to  such  as  these. 

An  important  phase  of  the  public  education  movement  of 
the  early  half  of  the  century  has  almost  faded  from  our  concep 
tion  of  education.  To  these  generations,  to  whom  the  new, 
broader  democratic  views  appealed  because  of  the  social,  polit 
ical,  and  economic  benefits  to  the  contemporary  generation,  the 
problem  of  adult  education  was  of  far  more  significance  than  it 
is  today.  This  adult  education  was  given  through  the  medium 
of  mechanics'  institutes,  debating  clubs,  "Ciceronian  associa 
tions,  ' '  and,  most  numerous  of  all,  lyceums.  A  national  conven 
tion  of  1831  enumerated  almost  a  thousand  such  organizations. 
The  Massachusetts  Report  of  1840  lists  eight  mechanics'  in 
stitutes  and  137  lyceums.  The  lyceum  organization,  launched 
in  Boston  in  1829,  included  the  town  lyceum,  and  country, 
state,  and  national  organizations.  In  reality  the  scheme  never 
arrived  at  such  complete  general  organization;  however,  it 
did  attain  universal  popularity,  very  general  distribution,  and 
in  some  sections  effective  state  as  well  as  local  organization. 
As  the  epistolary  form  of  literary  composition  was  the  most 
popular  in  the  preceding  period,  the  lecture  or  address  was  dur 
ing  this  period  the  dominant  form  of  expression,  even  in  the 
field  of  education.  The  leaders  of  thought  in  every  walk  of  life 

1  See  also  Book  II,  Chap.  xxn. 


The  Lyceum:  Emerson  4J5 

participated  in  this  adult  form  of  education,  and  much  of  the 
most  important  literary  expression  of  the  period  was  originally 
published  through  this  channel.  De  Witt  Clinton,  Edward 
Everett,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  Wendell  Phillips,  William 
Lloyd  Garrison,  Bronson  Alcott,  George  William  Curtis, 
William  Cullen  Bryant,  Henry  David  Thoreau,  James  Russell 
Lowell,  Edward  Everett  Hale;  such  political  leaders  as 
Sumner,  Douglas,  Greeley;  women  leaders,  as  Julia  Ward 
Howe,  Susan  B.  Anthony,  Emma  Willard;  foreign  visitors; 
and  almost  every  man  of  literary  prominence  made  con 
tributions  to  this  form  of  literature,  more  or  less  permanent, 
and  more  or  less  educational  in  character. 

The  most  important  contributor  to  the  lyceum  type  of  edu 
cation  and  its  chief  adornment  was  Emerson, x  an  essayist  be 
cause  he  was  a  lecturer,  rather  than  a  lecturer  because  he  was 
an  essayist.  His  livelihood  for  a  considerable  period  depended 
upon  his  professional  activity  upon  the  platform.  Though  the 
remuneration  of  these  lecturers  seems  absurdly  small  when  com 
pared  with  the  extravagant  earnings  of  Chautauqua  favourites, 
yet  they  were  sufficient  for  the  simple  life  of  that  period.  The 
lecture  had  to  be  adapted  to  a  mixed  audience ;  it  had  to  be  lim 
ited  to  an  hour's  time ;  it  had  to  be  varied  and  stimulating ;  and 
it  had  to  conform  to  certain  literary  or  technical  forms.  Never 
theless  there  was  a  freedom  in  this  literature  given  for  the  occa 
sion  and  the  people  which  bespeaks  the  educational  character. 
Emerson  himself  said :  "  I  preach  in  the  lecture  room,  and  there 
it  tells,  for  there  is  no  prescription.  You  may  laugh,  weep, 
reason,  sing,  sneer,  or  pray,  according  to  your  genius."  The 
stimulating  and  illuminating  idealism  of  Emerson's  essays  is  an 
indication  of  the  high  purpose,  if  not  an  index  of  the  normal 
attainment,  of  the  adult  educational  endeavour  of  this  genera 
tion.  For  his  Self  Reliance,  Compensation,  Prudence,  Intellect, 
The  Over-Soul  not  so  much  moulded  the  beliefs  of  his  genera 
tion  as  expressed  the  unformulated  thought  and  the  highest 
aspiration  of  the  New  England  Puritanism  of  his  day. 

Of  literature  presided  over  by  the  muses,  there  is  little  which 
relates  to  education.  In  this  group  Irving' s  Legend  of  Sleepy 
Hollow  (1819)  undoubtedly  takes  first  place.  If  the  delineation 
of  Ichabod  Crane  is  a  caricature,  that  of  the  school  is  not,  nor 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  ix. 


4l6  Education 

is  the  "half  itinerant  life"  of  the  master.  No  other  account  of 
the  old  district  school  approaches  this  one  in  charm.  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne's  Grandfather's  Chair  retells  the  story  of  Ezekiel 
Cheever;  and  Daffy-down-Dilly  and  other  stories  draw  on  the 
rich  experience  of  the  district  school.  Henry  Ward  Beecher's 
Norwood  (1868)  is  a  tale,  or  rather  a  series  of  sketches,  of  New 
England  life  in  which  the  New  England  academy  finds  a  place, 
as  it  properly  should,  since  no  institution  or  phase  of  life  was 
more  characteristic  of  this  period.  In  a  more  humorous  vein 
is  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 's  description  of  the  Apollinean  Female 
Institute  in  Elsie  Venner.  At  a  later  day  and  in  more  attrac 
tive  form  the  New  England  private  school  receives  probably 
the  most  attractive  treatment  given  to  a  school  in  American 
literature  in  J.  G.  Holland's  Arthur  Bonnicastle  (1873). 

If  American  literature  is  not  rich  in  materials  chosen  from 
the  schools,  probably  no  other  literature  is  so  enriched  by  casual 
references  to  the  school.  Perhaps  no  evidence  of  the  practical 
efficiency  and  worth  of  the  American  public  schools  is  more  sig 
nificant  than  the  frequent  reference  in  public  speech,  in  the 
daily  press,  in  ephemeral  or  permanent  literature,  to  "the  little 
red  schoolhouse."  This  conventional  phrase  typifies  the  simple 
and  somewhat  forbidding  form  of  our  education  of  the  past,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  sturdy  activities  and  high  ideals  of  our 
moral  life  from  which  the  generations  of  the  past  have  drawn 
their  sustenance.  If  our  theme  were  the  contribution  of  edu 
cators  to  literature  a  most  fruitful  subject  would  here  be  pre 
sented.  For  the  mid-century  productive  period  in  American 
literature  was  closely  associated  with  college  life,  particularly 
in  New  England.  The  period  when  Longfellow,  Holmes,  Low 
ell,  and  Agassiz  were  members  of  the  Harvard  faculty  was  an 
epoch-making  one  in  our  American  literature.  Holmes's  Pro 
fessor  at  the  Breakfast  Table  and  Longfellow's  Outre-Mer  give 
the  flavour  of  this  life  and  make  the  nearest  approach  to  the  sub 
ject  of  the  technical  educator;  perhaps  by  the  same  measure 
they  fall  below  the  literary  standard  of  the  other  writings  of 
these  professors. 

The  one  ambitious  attempt  to  draw  the  materials  of  fiction 
from  the  life  of  the  school  is  found  in  Locke  Amsden,  or  the 
Schoolmaster  (1847),'  by  Daniel  Pierce  Thompson.  The  old 

1  See  Book  II,  Chap.  vn. 


College  Secret  Societies  417 

district  school  finds  here  its  fullest  literary  presentation. 
Though  the  mid-century  popularity  of  this  book  was  sufficient 
to  call  forth  many  editions,  it  is  now  nearly  forgotten,  and  its 
author  is  remembered,  if  at  all,  by  his  more  stirring  Green 
Mountain  Boys.  At  the  close  of  this  period,  but  drawing  its 
inspiration  from  the  frontier  conditions  of  the  early  portion  of 
this  period  in  the  Middle  West,  appeared  Edward  Eggleston's 
The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster  (1871).*  This  racy  narrative  is  the 
liveliest  account  of  the  pioneer  schoolmaster  to  be  found,  and 
as  a  delineation  of  frontier  life  will  compare  favourably  with 
the  best  in  its  sort.  Eggleston's  later  work,  The  Hoosier  School 
boy  (1883),  is  in  similar  vein.  His  Schoolmaster  in  Literature 
(1892)  adds  nothing  to  his  repute  and  little  to  our  subject. 

A  characteristic  feature  of  American  life  is  its  tendency 
to  voluntary  organization.  Perhaps  as  a  substitute  for  the 
pomp  and  ceremony  of  an  aristocratic  society  the  tendency 
reveals  itself  in  the  many  secret  societies  with  their  elabo 
rate  ceremonials.  This  national  characteristic  shows  itself  in 
American  college  life  in  the  numerous  Greek  letter  societies  or 
fraternities.  Only  the  earliest  of  these,  founded  as  an  honour 
society  with  political  purposes  also,  has  furnished  occasion  for 
a  considerable  literary  product,  much  of  it  of  superior  quality. 
The  Phi  Beta  Kappa  was  organized  at  the  College  of  William 
and  Mary  in  1776  with  membership  based  on  scholarly  attain 
ments.  Chapters  were  soon  to  be  found  in  the  leading  institu 
tions  of  the  country.  The  annual  meetings  of  these  constituent 
chapters  have  been  the  occasion  of  many  notable  addresses  or 
poems.  Emerson's  The  American  Scholar  was  written  for  such 
an  occasion  (1.837).  The  list  of  these  productions  is  a  long 
one,  most  of  them  having  an  academic  significance.  As  illus 
trative  of  this  type  may  be  mentioned:  The  American  Doc 
trine  of  Liberty,  by  George  William  Curtis ;  The  Scholar  of  the 
Republic  by  Wendell  Phillips;  Academic  Freedom  by  Charles  W. 
Eliot;  What  is  Vital  in  Christianity?  by  Josiah  Royce;  The  Mys 
tery  of  Education  by  Barrett  Wendell;  The  Spirit  of  Learning 
by  Woodrow  Wilson.  These  with  many  others  of  similar  ex 
cellence  are  scattered  throughout  the  century. 

One  other  type  of  literary  production  having  incidental  edu 
cational  importance  is  found  in  the  reminiscences  or  memoirs  of 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xi. 

VOL.  Ill— 26 


4l8  Education 

the  men  of  this  period.  None  of  these  writers,  however,  enter 
seriously  enough  into  their  earlier  experiences  to  make  the  ac 
counts  of  any  value  except  that  of  personal  testimony  as  to 
existing  conditions.  The  best  of  these  are  from  Edward  Ever 
ett,  Samuel  G.  Goodrich,  and  Noah  Webster.  Similar  to  these, 
though  much  fuller  and  of  no  great  literary  merit,  was  The 
District  School  As  It  Was  by  the  Rev.  Warren  Burton,  depicting 
conditions  at  the  opening  of  the  century. 

No  phase  of  informal  education  is  more  important  than  the 
moulding  of  the  character  of  children  by  their  choice  of  interests 
and  activities  out  of  school,  particularly  as  determined  through 
their  reading.  In  another  chapter '  of  this  history  will  be  found 
an  account  of  American  books  for  children ;  here  it  is  sufficient 
to  note  the  steady  trend  away  from  moralizing  and  religious 
disquisition  to  wholesome  amusement  and  secular  instruction. 

The  last  three  or  four  decades  have  witnessed  a  marked 
change  in  the  character  of  the  literature  relating  to  education. 
As  in  other  phases  of  thought  and  action,  the  dominating  influ 
ence  has  been  that  of  science.  Educational  literature  charac 
teristic  of  the  period  is  scientific,  either  psychological,  experi 
mental,  or  statistical;  consequently  it  has  become  far  more 
technical. 

Old  types  continue,  perhaps  still  dominating  in  mere  quan 
tity  ;  but  they  are  no  longer  characteristic.  School  publications 
of  advice  and  device  yet  flourish,  but  the  scientific  educational 
journal  now  receives  the  support  of  a  definite  and  daily  enlarg 
ing  clientele.  Official  reports  multiply  with  an  annual  certainty 
which  sets  at  naught  any  Malthusian  law  in  the  world  of  books. 
But  accurate  statistical  method  is  making  an  impression  on  the 
content,  providing  these  forbidding  tomes  with  an  enhanced 
value;  while  the  school  survey  has  furnished  an  entirely  new 
type.  Works  on  pedagogy,  addressed  to  the  profession,  have 
become  so  numerous  as  to  preclude  even  comparison  with  those 
of  the  preceding  period ;  yet  the  nascent  sciences  of  psychology 
and  sociology  have  given  to  many  of  these  a  substantial  char 
acter  which  justifies  a  large  allotment  of  space  in  libraries  and 
bibliographies. 

While  there  has  been  much  of  note  along  scientific  and 
philosophical  lines,  literature  as  an  art  has  paid  little  heed  to 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  vn. 


Memoirs  4J9 

the  schoolmaster  or  his  need.  Professor  William  James ' ' '  wrote 
psychology  which  reads  like  a  novel,"  and  Henry  James2  added 
to  his  novels  the  autobiographical  volumes  A  Small  Boy  and 
Others  and  Notes  of  a  Son  and  a  Brother  which  contain  much 
material  of  interest  relating  to  the  educational  experience  of 
the  two  brothers.  Howells, 3  Aldrich, 4  and  Hamlin  Garland5 
in  their  autobiographical  volumes  adorn  the  schoolday  tales  of 
their  youth  with  the  grace  of  the  life  of  the  imagination ;  but  no 
Kipling  dramatizes  fully  the  incidents  of  school  life  and  no 
Wells  makes  the  novel  the  instrument  of  educational  reform. 
The  nearest  approach  to  this  standard  is  that  of  a  few  educa 
tional  romances,  whose  appeal  does  not  carry  beyond  the 
teachers'  circle.  Chief  among  these  is  William  Hawley  Smith's 
Evolution  of  Dodd,  remarkable  for  its  early  failure  due  to  the 
prejudice  against  the  title,  its  later  success,  and  the  fact  that 
though  over  a  million  copies  have  been  sold  the  author  received 
not  a  penny. 

A  number  of  volumes  of  memoirs  furnish  valuable  literary 
materials  of  education.  The  works  of  Henry  James  have  been 
mentioned.  The  reminiscences  of  Senator  Hoar  and  of  Senator 
Lodge  give  illuminating  accounts  of  mid-century  New  England 
education.  More  recently  and  at  greater  length,  Professor 
Brander  Matthews  has  performed  a  similar  service  for  New 
York.  Most  important  of  all  is  the  recent  volume  entitled  The 
Education  of  Henry  A  dams  ( 1 908 ,  1916).  More  frankly  devoted 
to  the  educational  aspect  of  experience  than  any  other  autobio 
graphical  work,  vying  with  them  all  in  literary  charm,  this  study 
by  one  of  the  most  reflective  students  and  keenest  observers  of 
the  generation  just  passing  holds  an  outstanding  place  in  this 
type  of  literature,  and  in  educational  literature  is  unique. 6 

Children's  literature,  as  fits  a  "children's  century,"  has  be 
come  most  varied  and  attractive.  No  longer  is  it  the  formal 
piety  of  the  adult  reduced  to  the  priggishness  of  the  child;  nor, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  extravagant  tale  for  surreptitious  enjoy 
ment.  Child  life  depicted  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  adult ;  adult 
life  brought  within  the  interest  and  comprehension  of  the  child 
through  the  new  knowledge  of  psychology;  animal  life  personi- 

1  See  Book  III,  Chap.  xvn.  'Ibid.,  Chap.  xn. 

3  Ibid.,  Chap.  XL  <Ibid.,  Chaps,  vi,  vn,  and  x. 

slbid.,  Chap.  vi.  6Ibid.,  Chap.  xv. 


420  Education 

fied ;  science  humanized,  so  that  the  child  can  live  in  an  environ 
ment  of  reality,  tenanted  by  the  creatures  of  his  imagination — 
into  such  classes  do  the  books  for  children  now  chiefly  fall. 
Most  of  these  assist  in  the  real  education  of  the  child  in  ac 
cordance  with  principles  which  were  anathema  to  our  fathers. 
Some  of  them,  as  George  Madden  Martin's  Emmy  Lou,  belong 
to  the  school.  Myra  Kelly's  stories  of  the  East  Side  New  York 
schoolchild,  Little  Citizens  and  Aliens,  have  introduced  to  lit 
erature  a  new  type,  the  children  of  the  immigrant,  with  their 
humour,  pathos,  promise.  In  Lucy  Pratt's  Ezekiel  the  negro 
schoolchild  of  the  South  finds  utterance.  On  the  borderland 
of  the  literature  of  the  school  are  the  stories  Seventeen  and  Pen- 
rod,  by  Booth  Tarkington,  revealing  the  experience  of  the  ado 
lescent  schoolboy  and  girl  on  its  obverse  and  reverse  side — its 
tragic  seriousness  to  them,  its  humour  and  irritation  to  the  adult. 
Literature  for  children  has  now  become  so  voluminous  in  quan 
tity,  so  varied  in  character,  so  rich  in  content,  that  it  can  no 
longer  be  considered  merely  as  a  class  of  educational  literature. 
However,  it  performs  more  efficiently  than  ever  before  a  genuine 
educational  function  through  the  happy  union  of  humanitarian 
sentiment,  scientific  psychological  knowledge,  and  attractive 
literary  form. 

One  type  of  literature  is  peculiar  to  America,  the  literature 
of  the  immigrant.  Much  of  this  is  educational,  for  the  whole 
process  of  making  the  immigrant  into  the  citizen  of  the  adopted 
country  is  an  educational  one  of  scarcely  realized  importance. 
Of  fascinating  interest  also  are  the  literary  accounts  of  the 
process.  First  among  these  was  The  Making  of  an  American 
(1901)  by  Jacob  Riis,  a  newspaper  reporter  and  social  reformer, 
of  Danish  birth.  The  Reminiscences  (1907)  of  Carl  Schurz,  the 
soldier,  statesman,  and  liberal  political  leader,  of  German  birth, 
are  quite  the  most  voluminous  and  important  of  these  books 
from  the  general,  though  not  from  the  educational,  point  of 
view.  The  numerous  volumes  of  Edward  A.  Steiner,  of  Bohe 
mian  origin,  cover  the  experience  of  a  successful  educator,  lec 
turer,  and  sociologist  in  a  variety  of  phases  of  American  life. 
Chief  among  his  works  are  From  Alien  to  Citizen  and  Confessions 
of  a  Hyphenated  American.  Mary  Antin's  Promised  Land 
(1912)  contains  much  that  is  of  interest  to  the  educator,  for  it 
gives  a  detached  and  yet  intimate  or  personal  view  of  many  of 


Immigrants  421 

our  customs  and  institutions,  including  the  school,  into  all  of 
which  the  native  so  gradually  grows  that  he  never  becomes 
reflectively  conscious  of  them.  This  conscious  reaction  to  the 
new  environment  by  one  foreign  to  it  and  acute  enough  to  ob 
serve,  constitutes  in  fact  the  real  educative  influence  of  a 
society.  More  recently  a  Syrian,  Abraham  M.  Rihbany,  has 
given  an  account  from  a  new  angle ;  while  the  latest,  and  from 
the  formal  educational  point  of  view  the  fullest,  account  is  An 
American  in  the  Making,  by  M.  E.  Ravage,  of  Rumanian  origin. 
This  latter  gives  quite  the  best  description  of  the  life  and  spirit 
of  a  Mid- Western  university  that  is  to  be  found.  No  other  part 
of  the  recent  educational  literature  of  America  deserves  greater 
attention  than  the  volumes  of  this  group  or  possesses  any 
thing  like  their  charm,  originality,  or  significance. 

With  the  increasingly  technical  character  and  appeal  of  sci 
entific  and  philosophical  literature — particularly  the  former- 
has  gone  a  similar  technical  development  of  the  literature  of  edu 
cation.  This  has  been  of  profound  significance,  for  a  sort  of 
cross-fertilization  has  taken  place,  resulting  in  two  new  species — 
a  genuinely  scientific  and  a  genuinely  philosophical  type  of 
educational  writings.  Both  groups  sprang  originally  from  the 
new  science  of  psychology  and  the  less  accurate  one  of  sociology, 
or  more  specifically  from  the  methods  of  measurement,  whether 
experimental  or  statistical,  developed  in  connection  with  psy 
chology  and  sociology.  Even  though  the  results  obtained  are, 
as  some  maintain,  "the  vociferous  reiteration  of  the  obvious," 
yet  there  is  much  to  be  gained  through  a  scientific  interpretation 
of  the  obvious.  The  application  of  the  same  methods  to  prob 
lems  where  conclusions  are  not  obvious  results  in  profoundly 
important,  if  gradual,  advance.  The  two-volume  Principles  of 
Psychology  (1890)  of  William  James,1  probably  the  most  fas 
cinating  presentation  of  scientific  material  in  literature,  is  the 
most  important,  though  not  the  earliest  manifestation  of  this 
progress.  His  brief  popular  application  of  these  principles  to 
the  problems  of  education,  Talks  to  Teachers,  is  yet  the  most 
widely  circulated  of  books  for  teachers.  Since  those  days,  the 
literature  of  psychology  in  its  application  to  education  has  be 
come  most  voluminous.  Numerous  university  departments 
have  perfected  the  technique  of  such  work;  several  scientific 

'See  Book  III,  Chap.  xvn. 


422  Education 

magazines  devoted  to  this  field  afford  channels  of  publication. 
Of  this  literature  the  features  of  two  distinct  types  may  be 
mentioned. 

The  field  of  child  and  adolescent  psychology  was  developed 
by  President  G.  Stanley  Hall;  none  of  the  numerous  investi 
gations  or  publications  in  these  fields  but  bear  the  distinct  im 
press  of  the  work  of  this  pioneer,  or  at  least  owe  a  great  debt 
to  him.  His  Adolescence  (1904),  with  its  great  store  of  accumu 
lated  data  and  its  vast  range  of  observation,  represents,  though 
often  in  an  ill-digested  form,  the  results  of  several  decades  of 
research  of  this  entire  school  of  investigation. 

In  the  later  development  of  scientific  method,  that  of  exact 
quantitative  measurement,  particularly  as  applied  to  groups, 
the  methods  of  Gal  ton  have  been  applied  in  the  field  of  edu 
cation.  The  chief  exponent  of  this  work  has  been  Professor 
Edward  L.  Thorndike.  His  Educational  Measurements  and 
Principles  of  Psychology  laid  the  foundation  for  this  type  of 
educational  literature.  A  new  type  of  literature,  rapidly  ex 
panding,  has  been  produced.  Much  of  this,  fostered  by  educa 
tional  endowments,  university  departments,  and  the  national 
Bureau  of  Education,  has  appeared  in  the  form  of  school  or 
institutional  surveys.  Such  surveys  attempt  to  measure  by 
accurate  scientific  standards  the  efficiency  of  organization, 
the  character  of  instruction,  the  value  of  specific  methods,  the 
amount  of  acceleration  and  of  retardation  of  pupils,  the  prac 
tical  value  of  the  school  plant,  and  a  variety  of  phases  of  school 
work  hardly  thought  of  previously  in  any  definite  quantitative 
way.  All  of  this  promises  a  new  era  of  scientific  progress  in 
education. 

On  the  philosophical  side,  modern  science  has  given  to  edu 
cation  a  more  pragmatic  and  realistic  interpretation.  Many 
volumes  of  exposition,  logical  or  sociological  in  character,  have 
appeared.  The  closing  decades  of  the  century  witnessed  a  revi 
val  of  interest  in  this  field,  chiefly  under  the  leadership  of  Dr. 
William  T.  Harris, *  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education 
from  1889  to  1906.  Through  official  reports,  public  addresses, 
and  published  volumes  he  was  chiefly  responsible  for  the  popu 
larity  of  German  philosophical  interpretation,  particularly  of 
the  Hegelian  character.  In  a  more  general  field  President 

'See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xvn. 


General  Comment  423 

Butler,  through  his  Meaning  of  Education  and  other  essays,  has 
given  more  popular  interpretation  of  educational  principles.  In 
this  field  of  philosophical  interpretation  the  writings  of  one  man. 
John  Dewey,1  transcend  all  others  in  American  educational 
literature.  In  fact  it  may  be  said  that  in  the  field  of  strictly 
technical  literature  Professor  Dewey  has  made  the  one  great 
American  contribution.  While  most  of  these  writings  have  ap 
peared  in  monographic  form,  such  as  his  School  and  Society 
(1890),  Interest  as  Related  to  Effort  (1896),  Child  and  the  Cur 
riculum  (1902),  How  We  Think  (1911),  his  Democracy  and 
Education  (1917)  is  a  complete  logical  scheme  of  educational 
interpretation,  the  only  one  ever  worked  out  by  an  American, 
and  the  one  most  representative  of  present  world  thought  and 
modern  science. 

In  the  literature  of  appreciation  some  contributions  have 
been  made.  Professor  Barrett  Wendell's  Universities  in  France 
uses  the  foil  of  French  customs  and  institutions  to  reveal 
American  light  and  shade.  Professor  Gayley's  Idols,  as  well  as 
occasional  essays  from  a  number  of  pens,  reminds  us  of  the 
inexhaustible  field  for  appreciation  or  for  criticism  of  the  teach 
er's  experience  or  of  the  teacher's  problems.  Effective  and  de 
lightful  in  its  form  is  Professor  Francis  G.  Peabody's  Education 
for  Life  (1918),  an  appreciation  of  one  of  America's  most 
significant  educational  experiments,  Hampton  Institute. 

Foreign  observers,  with  either  greater  detachment  or  more 
scientific  attitude,  have  rendered  their  tribute  of  comment. 
Some  of  these,  as  the  Moseley  Commission  from  England,  offer 
comments  valuable  to  both  observed  and  observer.  Perhaps 
the  chief  defect  to  be  noted  in  these  foreign  comments  is  the 
failure  to  perceive  that  the  * '  f eminization ' '  of  American  educa 
tion  does  not  necessarily  mean  its  "eff eminization." 

On  the  whole,  the  literature  of  American  education  is  typ 
ical  of  that  education.  In  the  past  when  education  was  a  subor 
dinate  thing,  a  concern  of  the  church  or  of  the  family  or  of  the 
individual,  the  literature  was  fragmentary  and  interpolated. 
When  education  became  general  and  technical  in  a  crude  way, 
a  technical  literature  having  similar  crudities  developed.  With 
the  fresh  substance  for  literary  creation  at  hand,  furnished  by 
savages,  by  frontier  life,  by  the  new  life  of  freedom,  with  its  new 

1  See  also  Book  III,  Chap.  xvn. 


424  Education 

institutions,  by  ingenious  conquest  of  the  nation's  boundless 
wealth,  the  literary  creator  had  no  need  to  turn  for  materials 
for  the  imagination  to  the  slightly  stimulating  and  highly  con 
ventional  life  of  the  school  taskmaster.  Still  is  much  of  the 
present  educational  literature  characterized  too  often  by  super 
ficiality,  as  is  our  education;  still  is  it  inaccurate,  as  our  educa 
tive  processes  are  inexact;  practical,  as  the  demands  of  our  lives 
are  practical;  still  does  it  deal  with  immediate  problems,  as 
our  education  and  our  social  organization  are  bound  to  do. 
On  the  other  hand,  much  of  it  has  attained  a  scientific  character 
unknown  in  any  preceding  period ;  some  of  it  possesses  a  philo 
sophical  penetration  and  reveals  a  form  of  exposition  worthy  of 
the  best  of  any  period.  Much  of  it  is  rich  in  the  promise  of  the 
future.  In  some  respects  even  the  practical  working  idealism 
of  American  life,  usually  concealed  under  a  materialistic  exterior, 
finds  expression  in  literary  forms  worthy  of  its  conscious, 
though  usually  unexpressed,  purposes. 


RETURN 


GENERAL  LIBRARY  -  U.C.  BERKELEY 


BDDDED3aSl 


